the castle captures me: What to eat on Rum

Searching for dinner!

It is finally, actually hot on Rum, and we have been making the most of the summer days. Trudi, our new Ranger, held a Foraging Walk to show us all the exciting things that grow on the island that we could actually live off if we had to and the Calmac didn't bring us our Co-op order. It was a hot afternoon and we wandered across the salt marsh before crossing the beach - the tide was way out - while Trudi explained how incredibly full of nutrients the loch must be, each rockpool hosting a crowd of creatures, both plant and animal.

Crossing the salt-marsh

This was an opportune time, as the Small Isles area around Rum and Canna has just been declared one of the 30 Marine Protected Areas in Scotland. We are very proud of our role in helping to secure the MPAs - we visited the consultation, wrote letters and were - though it didn't feel like it at the time - "politically active" in helping to make this happen. The MPAs are a vital step towards safeguarding our sealife, Britain having one of the most fertile and important coasts for marine animals and plants in Europe, and hopefully England will soon follow Scotland in designating more areas around the English coast too. Even (some) fishermen agree that it's needed, to protect fish stocks well into the future...although the reason for "our" MPA wasn't so much the fish as the molluscs and black guillemot.

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Speaking of molluscs, these were a popular topic during the foraging walk as Trudi helped to show us how to harvest mussels and winkles responsibly (i.e. not too many of them, and by hand), but I found it more exciting learning about all the weird and wonderful plants that grow on the shore, that I have often trampled on or more likely, fallen over on my way to the beach at low tide (Mum isn't the only person to fall in holes on the island!). There is the notorious "scurvygrass" - so-called because it contains vast amounts of Vitamin C and was eaten by sailors when they got back from their not very nutritious journeys across the sea - forget 5 a day, this was their 1 a day if they were lucky. Then there was plantain - not the Jamaican kind but small plantain plants. We were warned not to eat buttercups - apparently they contain large amounts of arsenic! But "silver-root" is good for you - it is the leaves that are silvery, but the root can be cooked for dinner:

Silver-root

Trudi demonstrating how much food there is on Rum...

...getting it out of the ground can be somewhat more awkward!

As the tide rushed back in the foragers had to abandon the rocks to cross back to the island, but not before they'd made an impressive collection:

What they found.

I had given up on the walk before this stage though, as I dislike taking creatures from the sea. I know it's illogical as I will eat fish, but there's something about prising sea creatures off the rocks that makes me feel worried - we don't exactly have to hunt them down, they are too easy to catch! - also I feel very protective of the seashore. Perhaps because I swim by the rocks so often, it feels strange to evict the creatures that live on them from their home. We have so much space already - though maybe not on Rum, where we are in the minority...

So I returned to the garden, where despite all the hurdles we have faced in growing stuff, it is, unbelievably, still growing! We have already harvested our first onions, lettuces and salad leaves, and it looks as though the potatoes may be ready soon, not to mention the hordes of tomatoes that are turning the polytunnel into a forest. For a while I was dismayed by the garden and the over-fecundity of the weeds, rats and generally by "Nature" - it made me realise how hard it is to grow food and how much is stacked against you when you don't use masses of technology to "fight back". It's not all pretty tweety birds and beautiful butterflies - those butterflies kill your broccoli! It made me understand why so many people see Nature as their enemy and feel a need to fight - for centuries, survival was incredibly hard; and for many people it still is. But nonetheless I wouldn't be comfortable spraying it all with pesticides or turning it into a garden centre; it's living with nature that's the challenge, one that people perhaps haven't really got to grips with yet: how can we live with it, still survive (happily) while allowing everything else to survive too? What is the balance? There are lots of farmers in the UK trying to achieve this and I am amazed at their persistence, and also proud that I am trying in a tiny way to see how it feels, too. Although what I may chiefly remember from Rum gardening is learning to hate dock-leaves...

But ultimately, it's good to know that if all else fails, we can at least eat potatoes, onions and, er, marigolds. Not sure if they're a "foraging" food...