As many of you know, last year (2025) I finished an epic project attempting to live completely off the land for a year. Here, I would like to share how it was to only eat foraged and wild food: how the plans and expectations relate to the reality; how it impacted me; would I do it again?
The plan
Originally, I had imagined eating a diet based on carbohydrates, like most people in the UK today. Rather than wheat and potatoes though, I would be eating sweet chestnuts and acorns. Protein and fats would be found in these and other nuts, but also in a selection of wild animals (see table 1). This plan would give me, on average, about 2,300 calories per day. As I was also intending to forage other nuts, fruits and greens, I was confident these foods would give me the macro-nutrients I needed, IF I could gather them all!
| Sweet chestnuts | Acorns | Venison | Rabbit |
| 110Kg | 55Kg | 73Kg | 36Kg |
| c. 20,000 UK nuts | c. 27,000 nuts | c. 7 roe deer | c. 60 rabbits |
Planned food for the year
The reality
It was a really bad year for nuts! I had collected about 10kg of acorns and sweet chestnuts in the years leading to my project and needed a LOT more. However, every few years nut-producing trees have a ‘fallow’ year, with no or few nuts grown. This is likely a method for the trees to bring down the populations of pesky nut eaters. Including humans...
I managed to get a few sweet chestnuts locally and some acorns from Scotland (thank you Ann!) and Wales, where a few trees hadn’t got the memo. At the end of that Autumn, I had a total of 41kg of nuts in stock and so knew I would have to spend notable proportions of my year on a ketogenic diet, relying on fat rather than carbs for my energy.
I had originally thought I’d get my fats from the nuts and animals I was eating, but without the acorns and chestnuts, this wasn't going to work. And with mostly deer, I was also in trouble, as they are relatively lean. I either would have to source more fat-rich wild boar or find fat another way. Luckily, I was given plenty of deer tallow from a friend who controls deer populations (thank you Peter!). This I rendered and added to everything I ate - I even made a pudding of tallow, honey and dried berries.
The graphic below gives a nice overview of my biggest food sources. The numbers at the top are what I had planned, at the bottom is the reality.
Hungry teenagers are a great help when you’re doing a lot of skinning and butchery! As you can see, the fats really made up for the paucity of nuts.
Living on a ketogenic diet with the foods I had available was slightly limited: meat, tallow, a few nuts and greens. I had fantastic flavourings I had made from foraged foods: dried seaweeds and mushrooms (thank you Davie!); wild vinegars and fermented greens; wild spices, herbs and homemade sea salt. The broths and stews I mainly lived on were truly delicious, but after a month I would be craving variety in flavour and texture. So, I planned the keto phases to end on special occasions: full moons; solstice's, equinoxes and the in-between festivals; birthdays and Christmas. On these days I would re-access my whole pantry of foraged food: nut flours, dried fruit and honey (oh honey!). It felt like luxury and made up for the fact that people around me were eating all kinds of nice (not foraged) things.
Bone broth, some kind of stew, and a mouse on a stick. The first two are typical of my year, especially when ketogenic, mice an occasional treat! (photos Nicola Strange)
Sweet chestnut and hawthorn berry cakes - delicious! As was my Christmas dinner, which tasted better than it looks and took me all day to eat. (photos Nicola Strange)
The foods logged in the above graphic work out to be about 2240 calories per day, so very close to my initial plan. Of course, I also ate lots of other foraged foods, see here for a detailed list and the pictures below for my stores when I began.
Foraged food prepared ready for my year (photos Nicola Strange)
I also ate a LOT of wild greens, mostly common hogweed, nettles and mallow. I didn’t eat roots, as the solid clay in my locality make them not worth the effort. I was confident that I would get all the micronutrients I needed from my stored goods and freshly foraged flora. In fact, with climate change and the mild winter that year, there really was only a month when I couldn’t get fresh greens.
Worthy of worship: common hogweed, nettles & wild garlic
(photos Nicola Strange)
To drink, I enjoyed a wonderment of wild teas, especially mugwort, yarrow and rose petal. I ground acorns for a nutty beverage (it is not coffee!) and loved to drink the water in which my sweet chestnuts had boiled, made beautiful with the addition of boar fat and honey. On special occasions I drank cider, mead and wine, made from foraged fruits and my bee's honey.
Nettle tea in wood-fired pottery cups
(photo Nicola Strange)
How did I feel?
Pretty great! I didn’t get ill the entire time and felt absolutely fine. I had started with some extra weight, at about 12 stone. I allowed my weight to go down over the first months, increasing my eating when I got to 8.5 stone, which is as light as I should be for my height. I then maintained at around 9-10 stone the rest of the time. I felt I had tested my body to its limits. At my thinnest, I noticed that it became difficult to ignore hunger and I would tire more easily. At this time, fat became the holy grail. I was obsessed by it. Every dollop of tallow in a meal tasted fantastic.
Eating only foraged and wild food changed my understanding of who I am and where I am from. It is easy to say ‘my food comes from the earth’ and ‘I live on the earth’, but knowing things intellectually is different, in my opinion, to knowing them physically. Within weeks of only eating wild food I had a physical realisation that I am entirely made from the earth. My bones, blood and muscles all made from what lived on the earth. It is difficult to explain how this was something I could feel.
Collecting and processing wild food takes time. But it is time well spent: outside in generally beautiful places; connecting with plants and trees; using my hands. This immersion also added to my sense of being the inseparable part of life on earth that I always had been (but hadn’t fully noticed).
I found that other people were essential to my success. I was helped in the procurement of animals and the kind collecting of flora. Visitors were usually presented with a basket of nuts that needed shelling. Interestingly, a lot of people enjoyed the experience and found it therapeutic. Perhaps sitting and talking, while using our hands in meaningful activity, is deep in our DNA?
Another learning concerns fire. I cooked every day on the fire and had to learn how to do so in ceramic pots. This reliance deepened my relationship with fire. It was essential to making food edible and tasty, but it also brought great comfort in the form of hot drinks. Obviously, fire was important for me in many ways, but I am focusing here on food. Without fire, my diet would have been poor.
Now and the future
It’s been nearly a year since finishing the project. For the first few months after completion, I revelled in the ease in which I could get food from the supermarket, ready to eat! I felt a little ‘over’ wild food for a while, but now have begun to enjoy it again, gathering wild greens and incorporating them into ‘normal’ meals. After eating so much meat, I’ve mainly been veggie, but am starting to crave venison once more.
It was a privilege to spend a year living off the land, which has altered me for the rest of my life. I encourage all to connect where they can with wild foods, but also to take a moment before tucking into a meal, or even drink a tea, to consider where the ingredients came from. Where did it grow, how did it get to you, who made that happen? These questions help to appreciate each component and ultimately, the earth where it came from.
And would I do it again? Most definitely!