When I was a small boy, I enjoyed walking in the forests near my home on the west coast of Scotland.  When I think back on those walks, the most potent memories are of the great beauty and peace of the place but also of the aromas.  Wild garlic grew there amongst the beech trees and I loved its sweet, mellow smell.
Of course, at the time I had no conception that I should be digging the stuff up and taking it home, or even that it was garlic!  Nowadays though, I can't enter a forest without taking a hopefull sniff.....just in case.

I suspect that I'm like most folk now in that I do a little low-level foraging as a matter of course.  The handsome fellows above, for example, I retrieved from under a tree not an hour before writing this post.  I managed to recover almost a kilo in the space of fifteen minutes before dropping heavy hints to my wife about how nice marrons glace are, even if the making of them is a bit of an ordeal.

Given the opportunity, I'll quite happily pick brambles or anything else I can safely (and legally!) lay my hands on.  Despite being far from an expert, I'm a great believer in the principle of foraging and I suspect that I'm not alone in that.  The real trick is knowing what can be foraged, and from where.

The idea behind Forever Forage is to allow people to share their knowledge, using collaborative maps like the ones on the Foraging Maps page.  Anyone can add a placemark to a map or even start a new map for their own area.  In addition to listing locations, Forever Forage will be a resource for tips, recipes, guides and seasonal information about what can be foraged throughout the year.

I've a few novel ideas of my own too, such as pre-foraging and even reverse foraging!  I'll expand on these later but for now, keep 'em peeled!