We have collected together many of the items that we have tested and used ourselves – some of the best in foraging, herbal medicine, survival and traditional crafts related gear – and put them all in one place so you don’t have too far to look!
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Poisonous Plants in Great Britain, by Fred Gillam of The Wild Side of Life
This is my little pocket-book of 64 pages, brimming over with facts and folklore about poisonous plants. Actual accounts of poisoning are included and are given along with detailed descriptions of the plants themselves and their historical uses. There is also a useful table in the appendices of which plants are harmful to farm animals and pets. The whole book is lavishly illustrated with fine-art engravings from the botanical masters of the nineteenth century.
Click the image to buy from Amazon, (#commissions earned by The Wild Side of Life at no extra cost to you).
Opinel No.8 Mushroom Forager’s Knife
With a built-in brush for removing debris and leaf mulch, a varnished hornbeam handle and a Sandvik stainless steel blade. Like all Opinel knives, this mushroom knife will be in your kit for a long long time as it is built to last. Last time we checked this cost £24.95 (30th Jan 2024). Click the link to buy from Amazon.
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Mushrooms, by Roger Phillips
Roger Phillip’s classic book, Mushrooms, began as Mushrooms & Other Fungi of Great Britain and Europe in 1983. It has led many people down the royal road of mushroom identification and field mycology, portraying more than 1,250 species, with superb photographs and accurate identification text.
In each case, the mushrooms are depicted in all of their varying stages of growth, with very important details, such as the underside of the cap and cross-sections through the flesh, made clearly visible. The colour reproduction of the images is very faithful to the originals and this is important in a mushroom ID book.
Click the image to buy from Amazon.
(#commissions earned by The Wild Side of Life at no extra cost to you).
This reference book makes a lovely gift for the forager or nature lover in your life. No matter what other books you may have on your bookshelf, we believe that no-one should be going out foraying for mushrooms without owning a copy of this classic.
Last time we checked this cost £24.89 with 17% off the RRP (30th Jan 2024).
Mycelium T-Shirt… A T-Shirt that says it all!
At last, a T-Shirt that says it all!
No need for all that explaining about the interconnectedness of everything, and how mushrooms are somehow the glue that holds whole ecosystems together.
Instead you can merely point out all of the details on your stunning T-Shirt, which is available in a plethora of earthy colours, and some bright ones too, just to suit your mood when you go out foraging!
Last time we checked this was selling for £17.49 (30th Jan 2024).
Click the image to buy from Amazon.
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- BERRY PICKER
A berry picker is an invaluable tool because it not only speeds up the harvesting of soft fruits like hawthorn berries, sloes and sea buckthorn, but it also means that you will get scratched a lot less by their thorns! Another bonus… it can be used for rapidly harvesting nettle seed, once again without being stung! It is true that there will still be some leaves to separate from the seed, but not many, and half a bucket-full in just over half an hour is possible with this tool! Last time we checked, this cost £15.10 (30th Jan 2024).
Click the image to buy from Amazon.
(#commissions earned by The Wild Side of Life at no extra cost to you).
Nutley’s Large Willow Foraging Basket
This is a fairly large traditional foraging basket but not too heavy.
We use a range of different baskets when out on foraging adventures or harvesting food, including some we have made ourselves, but this one has performed consistently well for 6 years now and is not showing any signs of wearing out!
Last time we checked this excellent basket was selling for £22.50 (4th June 2023). This is a very home-made kind of basket. Not as satisfying as using the one you made yourself but if ours is anything to go by, every bit as good.
Click the image to buy from Nutley’s on Amazon.
(#commissions earned by The Wild Side of Life at no extra cost to you).
Fruit press, suitable for pressing out tinctures, infused oils and fruit juices.
Whether you are looking to press fruit for making wines or conserves, or to press out herbal tinctures, mushroom medicines and herbal infused oils, these fruit presses, made by Ferrari of Italy, are of a very high quality. Cast aluminium construction with stainless steel inner. This not only hugely speeds up the process of pressing out herbal medicines, but also increases the obtainable yield.
Last time we checked this cost £85.00 from Brewgenie.co.uk.
Excalibur 9 Tray Dehydrator
We often get asked which brand of dehydrator we would recommend, and the answer is always “it depends”. There are doubtless some reasonably effective cheaper product lines on the market, but if you need a real work-horse of a dehydrator, with horizontal flow technology to make sure that everything gets dried evenly, and with a whopping 15 square feet of drying space inside, then there really is nothing that compares with one of the 9 tray models from Excalibur. 15 square feet is like a typical farmhouse kitchen table!
Click the image to view or to buy from Amazon.
(#commissions earned by The Wild Side of Life at no extra cost to you).
These are professional quality machines used in the catering industry that should give many years of trouble-free service, and spare parts are also available if anything should ever go wrong, long after the warranty has expired. There is also a smaller 4 tray model available here.
Last time we checked, this cost of the 9 tray model was £345.87 on Amazon, (30th Jan 2024).
Poweroak Solar Power Station – for your off-grid needs, at home, in a camper-van or at base-camp
Whether you are looking to run your appliances and lighting in a grid-down scenario, power your field-tent, RV or camper van, provide power in your tool-shed or run electrical devices at an outdoor workshop or event, this is an excellent solution. The Poweroak Solar Power Station comes in a variety of capacities, and can be charged from the mains, from dedicated solar panels or even from recycled old house panels – a cheaper option.
Click the image to view and to buy from Poweroak on Amazon.
(#commissions earned by The Wild Side of Life at no extra cost to you).
As well as an array of 12v DC / 5v USB ports, including a high wattage USB type C port for charging laptops and similar items, it also has two mains 220V AC sockets on the rear connected to an internal 1000W inverter, which will even run smaller power-tools, smaller hobs, kettles, toasters and even a microwave oven in a power outage. It has a built in MPPT charge controller to maximise your solar power, low voltage protection, overcharge protection, low temperature protection and overcurrent protection. The lithium-ion cells inside are LG cells of a very high quality, as used in high-end electric cars.
The largest-capacity top of the range model was retailing at £1,199 but there seem to be some deals in the offing. We have one of these and it gets used every day for running outdoor events and as a household backup. Both portable and powerful!
