When you can smell woodsmoke billowing from chimneys, you know the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is well and truly upon us.

However dreary the summer might have been, it’s hard not to smile when the leaves turn red and you spot the first shiny conker of the year.

Autumn’s also a time for getting out into the countryside and practising the ancient art of foraging. The benefits of foraging are abundant. For starters it’s free food, which we could all do with at the moment, it doesn’t come with loads of packaging and it’s a healthy way to supplement your weekly shop, as wild food is often more nutritious than its cultivated equivalent.

Who’s going to buy pesticide-coated blackberries in a plastic box for £3.99 when you can help yourself from the nearest hedgerow?

Foraging is becoming increasingly popular, with celebrity chefs championing rare mushrooms, restaurants hosting wild food festivals, and foraging courses and holidays on the increase. So get out there now before the best spots are raided.

Richard Mabey, author of the 1972 foragers’ bible Food For Free, isn’t surprised by the latest spike in interest.

"There have been several resurgences in foraging and certainly in the last couple of years there have been something like five series on TV, so I think that’s an indication of how much we’re interested,” he says.

In her new book Wild Food, Jane Eastoe says we should learn to forage as a way of reconnecting with food in an age when it’s all too easy to pile up a trolley at a 24-hour supermarket.

“We have become so out of touch with food that we no longer recognise wild food as something we can utilise. Gathering some wild greens or picking fruit won’t make you fully self-sufficient, but it will put you back in touch with nature and introduce you to new tastes.”

But foraging doesn’t come without dangers, and we don’t mean getting stung by nettles or scratching your arms on brambles.

Just last month The Horse Whisperer author Nicholas Evans fell ill after eating poisonous mushrooms on holiday in Scotland.

“You certainly need to buy a good guide to fungi,” says Mabey, “not because there are enormous numbers of toxic ones, but because they are a tricky group of plants to get to grips with and unlike flowering plants they tend to look rather similar.

“There are around 4,000 species of fungi, only a dozen of those are seriously poisonous and some of those are quite rare, so the chances of being poisoned are pretty remote – but by buying a good field guide you’re defending yourself against a very slim chance of toxicity.”

Mabey advises against trying to memorise everything you can eat, but instead learn a few good varieties of fungi.

“It’s tempting as a beginner to know all the flora but the subtle difference between a toxic plant and an edible one is pretty specialised.

“It’s much better to know maybe a dozen species, which are virtually unmistakeable, and stick to those.”

So what kind of fungi should we be looking for?

“There are two or three which I think are exceptional and also tremendously easy to identify. The giant puffball could be spotted by a child of three without any problems whatsoever, it’s a very delectable species and not uncommon. It’s a huge, the size of a large football, and you cut it in slices.”

Don’t pull mushrooms out of the ground, simply cut them off at the stem so they can regenerate. Fungi are best cooked very simply, with butter and seasoning, and they can even be dried for use later on in the year, in risottos and soups.

When it comes to blackberrying, a little common sense is in order. Don’t pick from the side of roads, where they may be polluted, or too low down on the bush, where passing dogs could have watered them.

Venturing further afield, Mabey recommends gathering rowan berries and wild plums.

“Rowan berries are out at the moment, they’re bright orange berries and they’re very good for making into a sharp jelly to go with meats. There are also any number of damsons and bullaces which grow in hedgerows and you can use them in everything from cooking like you do with a cultivated plum, but they tend to be sharper and good for making Middle Eastern dishes with.”

And then we come to sweet chestnuts.

“Really you need to wait til the first frosts for those. They start coming down from the trees in late October and they’re much easier to gather then. The wild chestnuts are never as big as the ones you get in shops, which come from the Mediterranean or Turkey, but they’re the most accessible and commonest nut.”

Norfolk-based Mabey says his preferred foraging spot is the East Anglian coast, where marsh samphire grows abundantly between June and September.

“It used to just be eaten by locals, but it’s now got clout as a trendy plant. You gather it by pulling it up by the roots from the mud and you cook it like a thin asparagus.”

Besides foraging, there are plenty of wild apples out there to be had from scrumping, as long as you check first you’re not on private land, or at least that there is a public right of way. And in his latest book, The Full English Cassoulet, Mabey argues for the reintroduction of the ancient rite of ‘gleaning’, whereby poor people were allowed to go into harvest fields and ‘glean’ the ears of wheat that were left over.

“It was actually a legal right in many parts of Europe, but it fell out of common use about 100 years ago. It would hardly be worthwhile doing it for ears of wheat anymore, but it would be very good if it was overtly recognised as being permissable in vegetable fields. The mass harvesting of crops on an industrial scale leaves enormous quantities just hurled about in the hedgerows and scattered about the fields, it’s a complete waste.”

The book is stuffed full of ways to make do and Mabey espouses the idea that thrift can be an opportunity for fun. From ripening avocados on the car radiator to harnessing your home’s heat into the secondary function of cooking, and cooking all three courses in the same pot, Mabey also has plenty of suggestions for reusing energy.

His stockpot, inspired by an ancient tradition from around the world, is an ingenious way to cut down on waste by using up all your leftovers.

“We’ve become hysterically politically correct about food, so right through the food chain you can see waste, right from the harvest to the kitchen, where 30 per cent of food is wasted.

“For health and safety reasons people assume that if you go on cooking something for days on end it will turn poisonous, but it won’t. With a stockpot, you continuously vary the soup as the days go on just by hurling stuff in. So you can start with the gravy from a joint and sling in the remains of a bottle of wine and add the vegetables that you didn’t eat on Monday and sling in a risotto on Tuesday. What’s fun is it’s quite unpredictable and you soon learn how to fine tune it by adding lemon juice or some soy sauce.”

And, of course, a couple of freshly foraged mushrooms and windfall apples can go in the pot too.