There are berry bushes scattered through the open country. Walk up to one and press E to pick a handful. No tool, no coin, no land — berries are what there is to eat on your first morning, before you can afford a rod or a measure of seed.
Bushes grow on ground that would grow anything: open green country, not bare rock, sand or snow. Where the Gloom has had the ground they grow ashberries instead, which are worth nearly twice as much — the far country has always paid better and asked more.
A bush you strip stays bare for about seven minutes and then has fruit on it again, so a hedge you know is worth walking back along. What you have picked is yours alone: nobody can strip a hedge before you get to it.
Berries are the smallest meal in the game on purpose. Their
value is that there are a great many of them and they cost nothing — and
that three handfuls and a flatbread make a berry tart, which is
the best thing anybody can make out of a morning’s walking.