‍You can read all other entries to my Wildbiome Project Diary by visiting our Field Notes page or alternatively click here to read the first one.

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I am writing this the night before the Wildbiome Project starts. Tomorrow is the start of a foraging journey that I have never taken before and there are some pretty heady feelings wafting around our home, as well as the unmistakable smell of venison and wild garlic (more on that shortly).

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My final ‘normal’ meal has been scoffed. It was a fairly bland sausage casserole that I enjoyed more because it was eaten alongside my young family. They are not joining this adventure and mealtimes are a very important part of our life so I will miss these shared moments. I am already eyeing up a final wee dram of something strong and expensive from the drinks cabinet, in the knowledge that wild alcohol pretty tricky to come by (spoiler alert: I have made a small batch of all-wild cider that I’ll be enjoying at my friends’ wedding in June, along with an all-wild wedding breakfast I need to throw together at some point) as the reality of how this is very much like Lent on steroids. 

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The last month has been spent getting my body ready. I don’t mean that I have been fattening up or anything like that - I had a pretty indulgent winter with this lean spring on the horizon - but weaning myself off things that I will physically miss, so as not to have withdrawals too significant as to be a distraction from the task at hand. Caffeine: gone. Carbs: went weeks ago. Booze: almost zero. Portion size: in control and smaller. Much smaller. I am tempted to do a before and after body photo to see just how drastic a wild-only diet will be for my waistline, aware that this is not a weight-loss project but an inevitability with so few carbohydrates, sugars and ultra-processed foods. 

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Don’t get me wrong, I could do with shifting some timber. It is a positive side effect I am quite looking forward to. Fitting into trousers that I have outgrown and not squeezing into t-shirts that once loosely hung off me will be a nice little confidence boost. It is also likely I will get more exercise as I have to head out on a more regular basis to find food. Despite the trepidation I feel on the eve of this massive undertaking, I am looking forward to a number of elements. I will be foraging more than ever and mostly for me - most of my harvesting is done in preparation for my workshops so I only eat a fraction of what I pick myself. That will tip the other way, surely, and I can’t wait for that instinctive need to forage to stay alive to kick in. I am also excited to latch onto the rhythms of nature even more than I currently do, noticing minute growth of certain plants and assessing maximum yields with acute accuracy. This is an extension to the exploratory element too. Having just moved house to lovely Cumbria, we are still discovering new places in our immediate neighbourhood. Just today I came upon the new shoots of watermint popping up from the depths of a boggy bit we haven’t really ever bothered to walk the dog through. A lovely surprise and I hope to fast-track my learning of the local ecology, geography and seasons through this immense project.

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To the elephant in the room then: the things I am NOT looking forward to. There are plenty: the admin, the repetitive menus, the absence of favourite foods. Recording meals is never something I’ve ever gotten into the groove of but we are expected to for the science side of the project, so I must accept that weighing out ingredients and recording them in an app is part of the trials of doing this. No doubt I’ll get into a routine quick enough. 

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But how to keep it interesting, menu-wise? There is a risk it will all get a bit “50 shades of green” as my good friend (and fellow Wildbiomer) Michael White put it when he took part last time. It really is a case of vegetables and venison. Bags of greenery already sit strewn around the kitchen, ready for the inevitable treatment of steam-and-freeze. It’s not particularly varied right now but that lowers the bar for what constitutes a treat. In the past, I have pulled emergency stops for unusual fruit, less common vegetables and even glimpses of fungi rising from pavement verges. It never stops being a thrill, but now it has a purpose and therefore the spotting of a medlar tree, solomon’s seal plant or a scarletina bolete even greater appeal. I could easily have been driving back from a workshop somewhere and spotted these, knowing that they would go very well the next morning fried up and placed atop my wife’s beautiful homemade sourdough, and so pulled over to gather the bounty.

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Imagine that. Imagine having found a life partner who actually makes superb fresh sourdough twice a week and then to shun that for a life without marmite on toast with lashings of butter each morning, or eschew the perfect vessel for a poached egg and hollandaise sauce to seek dryer, plainer conduits for flavour. Having enjoyed that luxury for years, I will miss it dearly.

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What else will I miss? That’s easy and I hope it will be cathartic to fire off in one, having thought about pretty much nothing else for the last month, mourning each ‘final time’ I consumed one of these fairly ordinary foodstuffs. Coffee, chocolate, pasta, tuna, sweetcorn, bloody mayonnaise! Chilli and all its derivatives. Foamy pints of ale. Root vegetables (carrots! Who’d miss carrots?!) and butter beans. Citrus fruit. Pasta, takeaway noodles, cucumber. Cheese, specifically halloumi. Peanut butter. Actual butter. Bananas, cherry coke, pasta. And of course, enjoying the cooking and preparation of all of the above with my lovely family. I understand that the last time people took on three months of a wild food diet, they felt it was quite a lonely experience. Mealtimes could be irregular, trips to the pub a little dependent on tap water being a part of the round and an overriding sense of disconnect from the communal activity that eating together is. 

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There is lots to be excited about and plenty to be apprehensively aware of in the longer-term planning of this unique project. What is clear is that this will take all of my spare time, a good deal of admin and plenty of good humour. I would like it to be a positive experience, rather than a burden, and I am never one to back out of a challenge, particularly with myself. Whilst I have full confidence in my ability to stay alive through eating enough food, it is the levels of pleasure I currently get from wild food that I am reluctant to give up - I want my connection with foraging to deepen and not to become fed up of the incredible wild larder that nature offers up every time I leave the house.

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You can donate to the funding of this exciting project by either donating a few quid at https://chuffed.org/project/114196-wildbiome-project-2025-jim-parums . I will also be running a special ‘Wildbiome’ event in the middle of the project, aimed at showcasing some of the ingredients and recipes that have featured so far.

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