After a summer that always seems far to short, the natural world begins to transition into a winter shutdown. With shorter days and colder, wetter weather on the horizon, there is a definite temptation to begin your own preparations for hibernation. However, there are many things to do, learn and practice in these cooler months and often getting out and about can be the antidote to those seasonal lows. So here are four things to help you build your knowledge, skills, health and wealth in the outdoors.
Gain Knowledge with Mushroom Foraging
While there is still a decent amount of late season fruit to be found, autumn foraging is really all about fungi. The cooler wetter weather provides the perfect conditions for many fungi to produce fruiting bodies (AKA mushrooms and toadstools), making this the perfect time of year to practice your fungi identification. While being able to identify most of the fungi you come across will likely require years of study there are many common mushrooms that can be easily identified and some even eaten. It is at this point that I should probably warn you, that there are many species of mushroom which are deadly poisonous and many more that will seriously ruin your day, a good portion of which may look very similar to the edible kind. If you plan to take up mushroom foraging, approach every identification with caution and if you are not a 100% certain it may be best to leave it out of the family soup pot.
If that hasn’t scared you off, then here is how to get started on your fungi journey:
1. Obtain an identification guide – Roger Phillips Mushrooms and/or John Wright’s Mushrooms River Cottage Handbook No.1 are great places to start.
2. Find an expert – This really is an area where access to an expert is really worthwhile, if you can’t find a local fungi walk there are many online courses out there.
3. Get out and see what you can find – You’d be surprised at how many different species a walk through your local park and woodland will turn up. Take a few pictures or samples and see if you can identify them.
Practice Skills with Fire Lighting
After the relatively dry and warm days of summer pass, fire lighting begins to get more challenging. Damp wood, cold winds and persistent rain really can make a big difference to your chances of successfully lighting a fire. That is why autumn can be a great time to revisit the fundamentals of fire lighting and help you keep warm and dry throughout the colder months. Here are three things you can do to increase your chances of building a successful fire.
- Be more picky about the fuel you gather – Gathering wood that’s lying on the damp forest floor may work in summer, but in the colder months that could well torpedo your chances of getting a fire going and smoke you out too. So aim to gather twigs that are at least above knee height off the ground, ensure that the wood you gather snaps cleanly and is free of buds, leaves and moss, and feels as dry as possible given the conditions.
- Bulk up on your kindling – With less than ideal conditions, it is often best to focus on building a lot of heat and flame in the initial stages through large quantities of very small twigs. Gathering several large armfuls of matchstick-think branches to add to your ignited tinder, gives you the best chance of getting a fire going without smothering the flame.
- Match the flame to the fuel – to continue the previous point, a small flame requires small fuel. Trying to light a log with a lighter isn’t likely to work but that same flame applied to a bundle of small twigs will have a fire going in no time. So be patient when adding wood and slowly work your way up the sizes of fuel for each stage of the fire.
Increase Health with Sunlight
While the sun is generally too low to help you generate Vitamin D during the cooler months, sunlight remains important for health and wellbeing. The dark days of Autumn and Winter can be a real challenge to stay positive and motivated, so here are some things you can do to fight the winter blues.
- Light up the morning – Our internal clocks that govern our wake and sleep cycle are set based on exposure to bright light. So if you struggle to get up in the morning, a light alarm clock can be really helpful and I recommend getting outside as soon as it light to help reset your circadian rhythm.
- Get time outdoors – For many people, heading to work before it’s light and getting back after dark is a regular part of life at this time of year, but if you can try to get outside at least once over the course of the day. Even overcast sunlight is many times brighter than typical indoor lighting and fresh air makes a powerful difference. I have always aimed to get at least 20 minutes outside a day, even if it is just ducking out of a fire exit for a few minutes here and there.
- Supplement Vitamin D – As I mentioned above, for most of us in the more temperate regions, Vitamin D is really hard to come by naturally. While there are some foods you can eat that provide some amount of Vitamin D such as eggs and salmon, a good quality supplement can go a long way to making up the deficit. Vitamin D is a critical substance for many different processes in your body and vital to staving off many winter diseases and conditions. If you’re interested in learning more about the benefits of Vitamin D, I highly recommend checking out the book The Optimal Dose.
Build Wealth with Game Meat
Autumn typically marks the beginning of the hunting season in the UK and an opportunity to obtain good quality and ethical meat for reasonably low prices. Yet game meat remains relatively under appreciated. Without natural predators such as wolves and lynxes (which I would love to see brought back), many animal species such as deer, rabbits and pigeons would quickly tend towards overpopulation and begin to damage ecosystems. So regular culls are often needed to preserve woodland and grassland. Without a market to sell meats produced by these necessary culls many of these animals go to waste when they could provide at least a small alternative to intensively farmed meat. So adding some carefully sourced game meat to your diet makes sense both ethically and sustainably as well as often being grass-fed, truly free range and organic. If you would like to give game meat a try, here are two ways you can source it:
- Buy in fur and feather – If you are interested in learning a useful skill and saving money, buying whole animals and skinning/plucking and butchering them yourself is a great idea. If you don’t know any local hunters, then the Giving up the Game Facebook group is a good place to start and if you are looking for instructional videos on how to butcher and skin as well as good recipes for cooking I would recommend checking out The Scott Rea Project on Youtube.
- Buy from a game butcher – A quick google search should turn up game butchers in your area, but if you are based in the and around Birmingham then I recommend checking out Ethical Game in Stirchley.
I hope this has inspires you to get out more this Autumn, if you would like to know more about any one of these topics let me know. Until next time, make the most of every season.