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Forage Almanac · a seasonal foraging almanac

What to gather,
month by month.

A riso-printed almanac of wild food and slow ferments. The wheel turns with the year; each month prints its own harvest.

Turn the year

This month

July

Dry lime blossom in the shade for a honeyed midsummer tisane.

  • Meadowsweet
  • Wild fennel
  • Lime blossom
  • Yarrow

Late spring · May

Elderflower

Sambucus nigra

Botanical almanac plate of elderflower: broad cream umbels and dusty-pink flower-heads above serrated green leaves, printed on oat paper.
A second riso plate of elderflower in full bloom, cream and fluoro-pink umbels flecked with small white star-flowers over deep green foliage.

Pick elderflower dry, mid-morning, before the pollen blows off.

  • Elderflower
  • Sweet woodruff
  • Hawthorn blossom
  • Wild garlic flowers

Early autumn · September

Sloe

Prunus spinosa

Botanical almanac plate of sloe (blackthorn): clusters of blue-black berries and pink buds along a leafy branch, framed by a faint printed calendar grid.

Wait for the first frost, or freeze the sloes overnight to split their skins.

  • Sloe
  • Rowan
  • Hazelnut
  • Rosehip

Late autumn · November

Field mushroom

Agaricus & kin

Botanical almanac plate of woodland mushrooms clustered among ferns and pink yarrow, drawn in riso ink on oat paper.

Take only the mushrooms you can name twice. When unsure, leave it standing.

  • Field mushroom
  • Hedgehog fungus
  • Sweet chestnut
  • Late rosehip

A gathering rule

Take only the third
you can name.

Leave a third for the birds, a third for the ground, and carry home only what you are sure of.

Keep it a little longer

A small ferment

The oldest way to keep a harvest is to let it change. Salt draws the water, the wild yeasts wake, and a week later the jar tastes of the month you picked it in.

  1. 1Pack the harvest into a clean jar. Weigh it.
  2. 2Add salt at two parts in a hundred. Press it under its own brine.
  3. 3Cover loosely. Taste from the fourth day, keep it below the line.
fill line
Two parts salt in a hundred. Everything under the line.

About the press

Printed the slow way

Forage Almanac is a small seasonal press run by Wren Ishikawa, a riso-printer and forager with a kitchen that smells of drying flowers for half the year. Each issue is one month: what stands in the hedgerow, what to gather, and one slow way to keep it.

We print with two spot inks and let them fall a hair out of register. A riso machine never lands its colours perfectly, and we stopped trying to make it. The green sits a little proud of the pink; the pink glows where they overlap. A misregistration is not a mistake. It is the handwriting of the press.

Everything here is drawn, printed, and pressed on rough oat paper. Gather gently, name what you take, and leave the ground fuller than you found it.

One month at a time

Subscribe to the almanac

A single seasonal note when each month prints: what to gather, and one slow way to keep it. No more than twelve a year.

A fictional press. This form is a demo and sends nothing.