A short season and a small harvest

Moorland foraging is a modest business. A good afternoon on the tops might yield 400g of bilberries, a handful of wild raspberries and a few leaves of wood sorrel — nothing like the brimming baskets that hedgerow pickers boast about in September. That is simply the nature of the uplands: thin acid soils, late springs, and plants that spend their energy surviving the wind rather than fattening fruit for us. The answer is to cook as though small harvests were the whole point, because on the moors they are. One jar of jam made from an afternoon's picking will out-taste anything you can buy.

Pick with care: the moorland forager's code

Upland habitats are more fragile than they look, and several of the plants and birds you'll meet are legally protected. A few rules keep you on the right side of both the law and the ecology.

• Ask first. Most moorland is privately owned or managed for shooting, grazing or water catchment. Access rights for walking do not automatically include picking, so seek permission where you can.
• Keep off designated sites. National nature reserves and sites of special scientific interest often prohibit collecting. Check before you set out.
• Mind the nesting season. Curlew, lapwing, golden plover and merlin nest on the ground between March and July. Keep to paths, keep dogs close, and never linger where birds are alarm-calling.
• Take a little, leave plenty. Bilberries feed ring ouzels and moths as well as foragers. Never strip a bush, and never uproot a plant — wood sorrel and bilberry both regrow slowly.
• Pick cleanly. Use a comb gently on bilberries or pick by hand, and only fill a bag with what you will genuinely use within a week.

Bilberries: jam, sauce and the joy of stained fingers

Bilberries (Vaccinium myrtillus) are the moor's darkest treasure — small, blue-black, dusted with a pale bloom, growing on low angular stems among heather and bracken. They are tarter and more aromatic than cultivated blueberries, and they stain everything they touch, which is half the fun.

For a small-batch jam, put 500g bilberries in a heavy pan with 400g granulated sugar and the juice of one lemon. Warm the sugar in a low oven first so it dissolves quickly and you lose less of the fruit's perfume. Bring to a hard boil, then bubble for 8–12 minutes, stirring often, until a drop on a cold saucer wrinkles when pushed. Bilberries are low in pectin, so don't expect a firm set — a soft, spoonable jam is traditional and far better on scones. Pour into sterilised jars; it keeps for a year in a cool cupboard.

For a sauce to serve with venison, duck or a piece of roast beetroot, simmer 200g berries with 2 tbsp sugar and a splash of water for ten minutes. Add a spoonful of port or a few drops of balsamic vinegar, then crush roughly with a fork. It freezes beautifully in small pots.

Wild raspberries: making a little go a long way

Wild raspberries are smaller and sharper than garden ones, and they hide in gullies, scree edges and the scrubby fringes where moorland meets woodland. A handful is a triumph. Because the harvest is tiny, treat them as a flavouring rather than a bulk ingredient.

Fill a small jar with berries and cover with cider vinegar, seal it, and leave it in a dark cupboard for two weeks. Strain, bottle, and you have a ruby-sharp vinegar for salad dressings that will last for years. Alternatively, blitz 150g berries with 1 tbsp sugar and a squeeze of lemon, then sieve to make a coulis for yoghurt or porridge. Freeze any surplus in ice-cube trays, then bag the cubes — each one is a portion of summer in January.

Wood sorrel and moorland herbs: green and sharp

Wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella) carpets the shaded banks beneath birch and oak at the moor's edge, with its neat trefoil leaves and white veined flowers. It tastes of lemon because of the oxalic acid it contains, so use it raw and sparingly as a garnish for fish, potatoes or egg dishes — a few leaves torn over the top, never cooked for long. Because of that oxalic acid, keep portions small and avoid it altogether if you have kidney problems.

For a simple moorland tea, pour water that has just stopped boiling over a small handful of wood sorrel leaves and leave for three minutes. The result is pale, lemony and wonderfully refreshing after a long walk. Wild mint, thyme and, in late summer, a very few heather flowers can be used the same way — but take heather sparingly, as the bees depend on it far more than we do.

Storing and celebrating what you gather

Small harvests reward good housekeeping. Freeze berries loose on a tray before bagging so they don't clump. Make jam in tiny batches rather than saving fruit up, because flavour fades fast. Label everything with the date and the place — you will want to remember which gully produced that particular pot. And if a recipe calls for more than you picked, adapt it: a spoonful of bilberry sauce stirred through rice pudding, or a few wild raspberries dropped into a glass of something cold, is a perfectly good use of the uplands. The point was never abundance. It was the walk, the weather, and the taste of a place in a jar.