Picture yourself wandering down a frosty winter street in a rural, picturesque Irish village, your breath hanging foggily in the air, and your hands warmed by blazing wood-burning braziers and a cup of spiced mulled wine. Imagine the feeling of a unique European Winter-Fest style market here in Ireland. So now, visualise rows of wooden stalls lining both sides of the street, with hundreds of homemade foods on display. This is the culmination of Wild&Slow 2014, an exciting national event, which is designed to showcase and celebrate the best of wild foods that the Garden of Ireland has to offer.

The lead-up to this unprecedented wild food festival will begin with months of community-based education, as people are reminded about the traditional skills used by their forefathers in gathering and preserving wild foods. Skills such as pickling, drying, curing, smoking, and preserving in oils, sugars and salts will be passed on in detail, as will information about the spectacular array of wild foods available in the months leading up to the festival. This education will be accomplished through secondary schools, and through organisations for adults. A series of adult evening classes will also be introduced. This approach to education is based on the central concept of Wild&Slow 2011: cultivating enthusiasm for fresh, local, home prepared wild foods.

All will be invited to gather and prepare their own wild food products, and encouraged to present them for sale at what will undoubtedly be Europe’s largest wild foods harvest market. From fish to pheasant, from the deep dark flavour of venison to the sticky sweetness of wild blackberry jam, a contented reliance on nature’s gifts is as Slow as it gets.