Our Story

My wife Christina and I have always liked the outdoors. Shortly after university, we converted an old van into a motorhome to travel around the Highlands of Scotland and other parts of the UK over weekends and for summer breaks. Both of us had limited knowledge of foraging, having only gathered blackberries and raspberries with our parents and grandparents when we were children. But we started to dabble while on the road and visiting the forests and woodlands of the UK, gathering easy wild foods, such as bilberries, apples, elderflowers and raspberries.

When we found out we were having Arthur, we were living in the city. We knew we wanted to move somewhere more rural at some point, but we had no intention of moving quite yet. However, me being me, I got excited and started looking at estate agents’ websites, just to idly be able to imagine what our future home might be like. As luck would have it, I spotted a lovely house for sale, and when we saw that it was not far from one of our favourite remote camping spots in the forested uplands of the Cheviot Hills, we knew we had to book a viewing, still believing it to just be idle dreamery. But we fell in love with the house and location instantly and knew, even before leaving the viewing, that we had to buy it. As we pulled onto the drive for the first time, I believe Christina’s exact words were, ‘Oh no, we’re going to have to put an offer in, aren’t we?’ We moved in three weeks before Arthur was born and it was a completely new chapter for the three of us!

When Arthur came into the world, we knew we wanted him to have a nature-inspired upbringing, spending a lot of time outdoors in the forest. He joined us on our forest rambles and berry-picking forays in a baby sling from day one, and by around eighteen months old, it gave us so much joy watching him toddling around the ferns and gobbling the bilberries straight from the bushes! His purple fingers and mouth and happy face were all we needed to see to know he loved it!

When Arthur was three, the simultaneous arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic and his little sister Sybbie meant that Arthur and I suddenly had a lot more time on our hands. Lockdown led to many people developing new hobbies and skills (or deepening existing ones); for me, it was certainly a time when my foraging knowledge grew. Arthur was unable to attend nursery, so to give Christina and Sybbie some one-on-one bonding time together, I decided to take him out into the forest with me every day. That was when foraging really became a great shared passion between the two of us.

We would explore the forest and its plants and mushrooms and learn together. Whenever we found something interesting, we’d sit down and have a good explore, looking at all the features and comparing these to what we could see in our small pocket guides. It really was as simple as that, like collecting wild-food versions of Pokémon, only instead of Pikachus and Squirtles, we were collecting amanitas and boletes!  I also started to photograph our explorations in the forests and woods, posting them to social media as often as I could, mainly to create a visual postcard journal of our adventures together so Arthur could look back on them when he grew up. In a relatively short space of time, our knowledge grew, and Arthur could readily spot, identify and name quite a lot of plants and mushrooms by sight – both edible ones and the toxic ones that we needed to avoid. When Sybbie turned eighteen months old, she too started to join us on our forays, and the cycle of learning started again.

Eventually, our social media adventure diaries started to get noticed, and other parents wanted to know the secrets to safe foraging with children. This led to the creation of The Grizzly Forager, a visual guide to foraging with kids that other parents could follow and use. The Grizzly Forager’s main goal is to be a source of inspiration for parents; foraging with Arthur and Sybbie has been one of the most amazing, life-enriching things I have ever done, with almost limitless opportunities to learn, develop, have fun and just generally create family-centric happiness. I want other parents to experience that and to know that they absolutely do not have to be experts to do so safely. I like to think of foraging as a progressive learning journey, rather than something you study first, then do afterwards.

As time has progressed, other goals have also naturally developed, such as the importance of raising nature-inspired kids as future stewards and custodians of our green spaces, advocating safe and responsible foraging practices, and combating ingrained societal mycophobia through education about these amazing organisms. As time goes on, I have become aware that it’s bigger than all of that; The Grizzly Forager is about changing the way we see our relationship with nature and the natural world. I’ve too often come across kids (and even adults!) who have never seen blackberries, have difficulty knowing the difference between an acorn and a pine cone, and who have never seen frogspawn, let alone held (or kissed) a frog! For many, fruit is something we buy in plastic punnets from supermarkets, and animals are something we admire on television or keep as pets, while a spider is a pest, a nuisance, and often something to be feared when it invades our home. We humans seem to have lost our connection – our relationship – with nature and the world that gave rise to us.

But when we’re out there, together in the woods, in the hedgerows, on the hills, immersed within nature, our position changes. When the food we gather is shared with the sparrow and the dormouse, and the bench on which we sit down to eat is a tussock of moss, teeming with life, we become one with the wider system of nature. We are no longer apart from, but a part of the whole. This website is primarily about foraging, but I hope it also gives rise to a deeper appreciation of nature, for you, and for your children. As the seasons change, those soft little feet, leaving gentle impressions in the forest moss, will one day be large enough to make a much deeper impact, and the nature of that impact will depend greatly on their relationship with the natural world. It may sound fantastical, but raising wildlings is not only beneficial to them and to us; it benefits the world. As you may have heard, even the smallest person can change the course of the future, and this has never been more true, or more important, than now.

We created this website and published our first book, The Grizzly Forager's Guide to Family Foraging, as resources for parents of kids of all ages who want to learn about foraging so they too can reap the benefits of being a modern outdoor family. Many parents would love to forage with their kids, but are reluctant to do so because they feel that it's simply too dangerous. Whilst there are some risks, they are easily managed with just a few simple precautions that are covered in detail on this website. Please feel free to have a look around, take a look at some of the plants we regularly forage, download recipes, and read about the benefits of foraging with your kids, before going out and actually doing it yourselves! If there's anything you'd like to know, please do get in touch with your questions and share your experiences of foraging with your kids using the contact us page - we'd love to hear from you!

If you'd like to follow our foraging adventures on Instagram, Facebook or TickTock, you can do so @thegrizzlyforager.

Happy Foraging!

John (Arthur and Sybbie's Daddy)

The Grizzly Forager Team

I came into the living room when a few years ago to find Arthur playing "Foraging for Cauliflower Fungus at the Volcano" with his playmobil and thought it made a great family photograph! From left to right - John (Daddy), Christina (Mummy), Sybbie (The Foraging Princess) and Arthur. Unfortunately, Daddy plummeted to his doom down the side of the volcano shortly after this photo was taken and, although he survived the fall, was subsequently eaten by a hungry Spinosaurus. Ah, the joys of Fatherhood ...