Wild Mountain Thyme - 

A moon full of wild food

We'll all go together

To pick wild mountain thyme

All around the purple heather

Will you go? Lassie, will you go?

What grows around your home is your healer. This has been known for so long. Beneath our feet as we stretch out our toes into meadowgrass, there is an abundance of wild food that meets our nutritional needs and is living in harmony with us, right beside us. From ground elder, hawthorn and meadowsweet, to kelp sea lettuce, we are surrounded by food and herbal medicines. How wonderful that we can remember this and explore the healing medicines and nutrition all around us. Each year, we have a moon full of wild food, where we go to river, field, wood and sea to hunt for our food. 

We have just moved to a new little village in the middle of North Norfolk just two years ago. We have connected with the village by finding a fallen tree in the nearby woods and making it the village maypole each year; welcoming local people and offering music and dance. On May day, we crept around the village at dawn with wild flower baskets delivering them secretly to our neighbours. We did meet an old woman from the village who caught us and we offered her a basket of flowers. She cried with joy all the way home. And so in this way, of connecting deeply with the land and peole around us, we have been finding where all the medicines and foods grow around us.

This year, we enjoyed making these treasures:

Medicinal tinctures: 

The first dew facial wash on May day- lifting the early morning dew from the flowers and grasses on the first day of May is a traditional self blessing and deep connection to the earth and the magic of beauty. 

Roses; we are all love, in the purest sense. Roses are a reminder of this as they resonate such a potent scent and image of beauty. Dog roses of white and pink with sunbeams in the middle offer such delight. Traditionally they are themselves offering love, healing luck inner beauty in their essence - Roses in your bath, rose water to wash your face, made simply with roses and spring water, rose water with some brandy for a tincture, add some water and crystals for a wonderful aura or room spray. Rose hips in honey, or as a tea can help ease and lift a cough.

Marigolds; maidens of the sun, calendula flowers are anti-viral, anti-anflammatary and so treat infections, skin problems and are wonderful for healing the skin of insect bites, and skin conditions, as well as cuts and bruises. Marigold and beeswax balm- can be made by making Marigold sun oil- putting marigolds in a glass jar with almond oil, or some such light carrier oil and leaving in the sun for a few days, shaking every few hours. You can then add beeswax over heat until it is a lovely thick golden balm, a gift from the sun. The petals look lovely as cake decorations. I like to wear them in my hair too! It adds a little sunshine to your day.

Meadowsweet, rosehip, elderberry, echinacea- these can all be made into medicines/ syrups that last the whole year by adding them to vegetable glycerin or honey and leaving them for a few days and then removing the herb, they can also be boiled up with the herbs before removed and of course dried for teas.

Meadowsweet- this flower always reminds me of the lady dancing in the wind with her sweet scent-the natural aspirin, good for indigestion, diarrhoea, rheumatism, cystitis and much more.

Elderflower and elderberry-the wise elder tree is great for healing and preventing colds, flus, constipation. Its a lovely syrup, especially with a few cloves and a bit of echinacea syrup.
Rowan berries- the mountain ash, tree of protection is used to protect the home as a tree or dried berries above the hearth and door and is used to treat urinary difficulties, indigestion.

Hedgerow jam- combining nature's medicinal cupboard; the hedgerow, into a jam is a great way to boost immunity and enjoy the lush pleasures of late summer's bounty: boiling apples, blackberries, hawthorn berries, rose hips and rowan berries into a jam by mixing it with water and honey. 

Wild Food

Wild Garlic/ Ransoms-This grows by the river banks in early spring, around the spring equinox- 21st March is a good time to harvest. We found a lovely spot by the river a cycle ride away, where the banks were made of wild garlic swaying in the breeze. The children could float their little wooden boats down stream and under bridges. 

It is delicious cooked with onions and stock in a simple soup, or added to any meal. It makes a great pasta sauce/ pesto with tomatoes or parmesan and ground almonds or pine nuts or chopped with olive oil in fresh bread.

Wild garlic is said to be even more medicianl than cultivated garlic, it is cardio-protective, good for your circulatory system, good for lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, and supporting our immune systems. 


Nettles-I am constantly asking my husband who tends to the garden so well, to leave some nettles. My son makes rope and seed butter from them, and we enjoy the tea, soup and use as a spinach to add to stews, soups, and meals. They are lovely with boiled potatoes and butter! If something grows so abundantly near so many people it  must be there to offer us some guidance. 

The new spring leaves are the tastiest and full of the most nutrients. Nettles have so much vitamin A and C and are great to detoxify and cleanse the body. They have often been used to prevent colds and winter associated illness'.

Spring green salad- On our usual monday morning walk, we gathered all the spring greens we could find in the wild places of our village. The children were amazed to find that most of the plants that they suggested, could be eaten, and despite some of the bitter tastes, they tried them all. So we made a salad of young dandelion leaves, lion's tooth, (filled with iron and calcium and vitamin A) wood sorrel which my 6 six year old daughter has nibbled on the lemony leaves since being a baby, ground elder- traditionally used to ease swelling and pain, and rich with vitamin C , iron, calcium, copper and manganese. We added daisies, also rich in vitamin C and an anti-inflammatory, meadow sweet, wild strawberries, prickly wild lettuce, dead nettles. We enjoyed half of our collection by adding flour and milk and eggs and making fritters with them and the rest we ate raw. 

Cleaver juice- another wild food rich in vitamin C, once we stopped from throwing it at each other, as the sticky sprawling plant sticks so well to clothes and hair and is loved as a game by children, we harvested a good stash. You can mix this with water and honey and wizz it and sieve it or make a tea with honey. This is great when making seasonal transitions like winter to spring, it is said to help the lymphatic system.

Pineapple weed- a chammomile that grows in abundance in many places, has similar calming properties to the well known roman chammoimile, you can put this in oil for a herb oil and dry it to make tea with to ease head and tummy aches. We found a whole field at the entrance to our local woods.

Samphire- If you are living in Norfolk, you are probably well aware that Samphire is a Norfolk treasure. Taking your shoes off, and probably most of your clothes, and wandering around the Norfolk creeks like an imp in the thick mud searching the little slender asparagus like looking plants is an experience in itself. Boiling up Sampire and enjoying them with a thick slice of bread and butter is a real treat too! It is also rich in minerals and vitamins and has immune stimulant characteristics. The creeks are one of the best spots for wild swimming too!

Seaweed- Sea lettuce, kelp, bladder wrack, dulse and kelp are the sea weeds that we used this year, although there are hundreds of edible sea weeds and there are no posionous seaweeds that can be picked on foot in the uk. They are highly nutritious and full of minerals, nutrients, protein, fibre, vitamin K and folic acid. They are seen as superfoods, although have been used for thousands of years. There is so much washed up on the shores. We were joined by a local seal who followed us in the water as we gathered buckets full.

We made a lovely tapenade with dulse, tonatoe and olives, great for dipping in oat cakes/ crackers. We also made a pasta sauce made with the same ingredients witn sea lettuce and bladder wrack and lasjhings of tomatoes. Delicious!

The tide goes out and supper is ready!