On Monday evening we packed up the truck and headed across to the other side of the valley for an evening with Huw from Pentrefelin Dairy.
Huw runs a small herd of Red Poll cows on a regenerative farm, milking with calves at foot and supplying the milk to locals and small businesses across North Wales.
We have worked with Huw and his family on different projects over the last couple of years – but this time we were there for something incredibly important – cocktails.
The guests for the evening were ladies from Merched y Wawr (a Welsh-speaking group of women that’s similar to the WI) and the plan was for Huw to take us on a tour of his organically-managed fields. At some point I would jump in and start talking about foraging, wild plants and how wild food in the UK relies on habitat management.
I apologised for the fact that while I am a Welsh learner, I am also an idiot – so I would be conducting the rest of my portion of the evening in English. I then dove into a hedgerow to fetch some Elderflowers, and talked about cyanide-inducing glycosides and alcoholic infusions.
Next was a rummage in a gateway for Pineapple Weed (a non-native that tends to colonise farm gateways in summer), and a look at some other seasonal greens. We then retired back to the orchard for bread, cheese and other local produce.
To finish things off we made some licencing-compliant cocktails, using a mixture of fresh and pre-prepared wild ingredients. The elderflowers were pressure-infused using nitrous-oxide, and then served with a selection of syrups and infusions.
The guests were then sent home with a sample of ice cream made using milk, eggs and fruits either from Pentrefelin or collected locally ourselves.
I love doing these small-scale food and farming events. Connection to the landscape, to nature… it’s all incredibly important for both our own health and nature itself.
Combining nature education with great company and some tasty food – that’s pretty much everything I could ask for in life.
Every year Wild Food People run a calendar of foraging and wild food courses in North Wales.
From forests and meadows to seashore and coastal – all of our courses are focused on food, ecology and giving participants the confidence to go and find these foods for themselves.
We work with nature.
We deliver expert foraging and wild food training as part of our wider work managing habitats in North Wales.
Every single one of our courses and events feeds back into improving those habitats, helping to provide healthy ecosystems for our local wildlife and communities.