Wyld Reads – A Handbook of Scotland’s Wild Harvests

If you follow Wyld on instagram, you’ll know how often I share excerpts from the books I’m reading, and how often I say they’re coming to the Wyld Library soon. But some of these books take me a long time to get through – and then even longer to write about. So I’m still planning to add Wild: An Elemental Journey by Jay Griffiths and The Overstory by Richard Powers (whoa, these books), as well as Tending the Wild, which I briefly touched on here. But there are other books that have inspired me creatively, from designers and poets to makers of many disciplines.

But today I am stopping to share about this handy dandy, practical little guide book that is inspiring in a different way. I found it in a secondhand bookstore a few years ago. When I picked it up, the book fell open to a chapter page titled, Bringing the Wild Back Home. I was sold.

I’m not sure why or how this book about Scotland made it to my secondhand bookstore in Sweden. Yet I was surprised to learn how akin our natural systems are.

What Fi Martynoga identifies as “key species” –– Stinging Nettle, Elder, Hazel, Heather, Dog Rose, Bistort, Wild Garlic, Sorrel, Sea Buckthorn, Chanterelle, Ceps, Gorse, Dandelion, Yarrow, Plantain, Juniper, Birch, Blackberry, Rowan, Blaeberry, Sloeberry, Bitter Vetch, etc. –– are all easily found here in Sweden too!

And this handbook taught me about a few new plants I had little knowledge of.

“Mankind evolved with the wild. Foraging and hunting are in our genes, though shooting and fishing are beyond the scope of this book. So many of us in Scotland now live in cities, so far removed from nature, that a return to picking anything other than bramble can present problems. There’s one set of anxieties about identifying a species correctly and another set about trashing natural resources.

“This book should reassure and set you up with the information you need. It is designed to tell you what you might find, and where and when you might come across it…

“And how to collect without harm to yourself, to other people, to the plant you are collecting and to the place where the plant lives. How to collect wild food is privileged knowledge.”

Who is this book for?

This is a book for foodies, for medicine makers, for craftspeople, and for all of those who simply want to know something of the landscapes we inhabit, or perhaps who want to feel a wee bit more connected to life.

Fittingly, the first chapter is about sustainable and responsible harvesting. We call it the Honorable Harvest here, as author Robin Wall Kimmerer was one of my first teachers. And though it’s a short chapter in this book, I am relieved it’s there.

The remaining chapters begin to unfurl with information about all sorts of plants – leaves and greens, fruits and nuts, mushrooms, seaweeds, medicinal plants, some we call weeds, etc. There is always an overview of the plant, with insights on its habitat, harvesting tips and common uses.

And the information is very clear too. There’s no nonsense or drama. Just insight laced with love.

Oftentimes there are recipes to accompany the plant information, which not only helped me understand new ways of cleaning and processing the plant material, but also gave me some inspiration for how to use them. I have a number of recipes bookmarked, from Tangy Pheasant Stew with Sea Buckthorn Berries to Chanterelle Flan.

An entire chapter is devoted to making teas, wines and cordials. Spruce beer, anyone? Elderberry wine or Dandelion wine? How about herbal teas from Heather, Meadowsweet, Wild Mint, Elderflower, Nettle leaves, Rose hip, Sweet Cicely, Wild Raspberry Leaf? You’ll never order from Yogi again.

And then there are random chapters with incredibly useful information, for example Seed Collecting – an overlooked art these days. Fi discusses it for less than 2 full pages, and yet I feel like it gives me a perfectly adequate amount of information.

Another section is devoted to Firewood – how to efficiently run a woodstove, heat your home with wood, choose the best wood, and even cook your food with wood if you so desire. These basic skills are described undramatically, as a grandparent might talk about them.

Chapter 8 is all about medicinal plants, and then chapter 10, Bringing the Wild Back Home, is full of practical tips in case you’re curious about harvesting materials for basketmaking, brooms and brushes, natural dying, earth pigments, even thatched roofs and other craft applications.

“We still have a living connection with the old traditions – people who have worked with the best of the old ones. Now is the time to find new applications for old techniques, the time for those skills to be passed on, or lost.”

pg 225

Fi’s writing style is practical, clear and straightforward, and yet it still manages to open up many doors and possibilities to the natural world. The knowledge she passes along is first-hand and common sense, and yet I can sense her passion too.

She loves this wild world.

What I appreciate perhaps most of all about this book is the seasonal guides – charts to show you which plants are to be harvested in which seasons, and which parts of the plants too.

I find that I reach for this handbook when I’m going out for a walk and want to be aware the plants around me, rather than just inattentively passing through. Maybe I want to do some foraging, or maybe I simply want to know something of the landscapes and the non-human people in them.

Checking the seasonal charts has been a good starting point for me as I began to re-learn about the natural world, since I definitely wasn’t taught about it. Since finding this book, I’ve gone on to learn about many more wild beings, with the nearly infinite possibilities they offer us, but I can credit this book for getting me quite far along the path.

It’s a very practical handbook that reveals what a treasure chest wild nature is. It is ancestral knowledge that fits perfectly in our modern world.