51 days ago
The Mrs berates me for making too much jam and chutney. I have about 65 jars in my larder which come Christmas present time will win rave reviews but that is neither here nor there. I am a sinner. I had wound down my jam activities for the year but then my pal C called asking if I could do anything with a stack of small, rather bitter green grapes he’s grown. One of my two vines has survived and i hope to be a grape producer myself in a few years so I thought it was worth an experiment.
162 days ago
The strawberries keep on coming but as you can see below we now have blackcurrants aplenty and the first raspberries, golden and red. It is almost time for summer pudding. Meanwhile I have been active in the top field where one day I hope to keep goats.
553 days ago
I made a stack of jams last year: strawberry, blackcurrant, gooseberry, damson and marrow & ginger. And now we are down to the last jar. The fruit trees and bushes are looking good for this year and the strawberry crop is going to be absolutely enormous. But we are now down to our last pot of jam, as you can see below.
800 days ago
There is just so much to do but my target is to harvest at least one crop a day and put it away for winter storage. Tomorrow is the official start of the apple harvest and, having jumped the gun by a week on the crabapples and edibles from the new top orchard I have created, work will, start on the old orchard by the river which is dripping with reddening apples begging to be scratted and crushed into juice. Meanwhile…
1419 days ago
If I tried to explain my pride at what you see below to daughter Olaf she would just roll her eyes with that “daddy you are so old and boring“ look. So, dear readers, humour me and share my pleasure at what you see below.
3034 days ago
I noted in my culinary bible that is a Darina Allen tome a recipe for summer pudding without raspberries. Darina uses cake as her padding I stick with the traditional white bread. Armed with the last of the blackcurrants from Shipston as well as the last of the dessert gooseberries I started to improvise. Having cooked both fruit until they popped in sugar water the overwhelming taste was blackcurrant. The juice was like concentrated ribena. But cripes there was not enough mixture for both bowls.
