Fun With Fruit & Fungi

Artefact of the Month - Bracket Fungi, Nuts

In Scotland, autumn is a wonderful time for harvesting fruit and nuts and the ancient loch-dwellers would have exploited and preserved nature’s bounty to help see them through the winter months when provisions were scarce. Our Fun with Fruit & Fungi day celebrates all that is fabulous about this exceptional time of year with lots of tasters of autumnal dishes and apple-pressing to make delicious fresh juice.

Our artefacts of the month are hazelnuts and a bracket fungi. We have evidence of Iron Age hazel hurdles and woodland management so it is not surprising that we found millions of the nuts - whole, shelled and event rodent-nibbled! - in our underwater excavations. They would have been a staple part of the diet along with other seasonal foods and berries. We also found a bracket fungi that may have grown in a damp spot on the original crannog. Such fungi, when dried, are used in fire-making at the Scottish Crannog Centre.

Join us for this annual celebration of seasonal fare including tasters of fungi, hazelnuts, soups and stews and bring a container for juice you may press from our windfall apples. The delicious nectar is worth the effort!

All day time events include museum exhibits, talks around a log-fire in the Crannog roundhouse, demonstrations and hands-on experience of ancient crafts and technologies.