That time of year again; free fruit and jam making.

(above; from my garden)
That time of year again; food for free

I don’t think I need many words here, the pictures are self explanatory. Its that time of year again, time to go hedgerow picking. My garden fruit  didn’t amount to very much. I didn’t really expect it to because most of the fruit was only planted this year or toward the end of last year. But; what I did harvest from the garden made  a couple of very tasty little snacks. Hopefully by next year there will be enough for a few meals.

The wild berries are abundant this year.




The Rowanberries are full and plump very early. Last years Rowanberry and Apple Marmalade is marked October 09, and here we are, at the start of September and already the Rowanberries are ripe.

I had my two grandchildren staying with my and they were happy to help.

Later that evening, after tea, wicked granny that I am, I sent my grandson up the ladder to pick as many of the tiny crab apples from my garden tree as he could reach.

It’s always the same, the nicest ones stayed on the tree right at the top out of reach.

These little apples are not good enough to eat but they add a fantastic flavour and good setting quality to preserves.

And this weekend I’ve had my other granddaughter staying. I explained to her that I wanted to attempt rosehip syrup for the first time this year.

She picked as many Rosehips as she could and I’m pretty sure I can make a batch of syrup from them.

Once I had a bag full of Rosehips we wandered along by the burn picking the ripe Blackberries, and this afternoon she has gone home proudly clutching her jar of Blackberry and Apple jam. Can’t get a lot fresher than that, this time yesterday they were on the bush, teatime today the jam will be on her toast.

Update; gardens, fruit, jam, planting and my fish.

A Brief Update

My trip to my sisters was marred by the darn virus but we managed to get out and about a couple of times. It’s always good to see her, we live 500 miles apart and only get together a couple of times a year so we need to make the most of it.

Found this pretty forgetmenot broach in a second hand shop and just knew it destined to be mine.

There is a park with ancient woodland and it’s only a 20 minute drive from her house so off we went to walk her two dogs. Despite the chill in the air it was a beautifully clear, dry day and the autumn colours were beginning to come through. It was lovely way to spend the morning.
 
While away I watched a TV documentary about ‘Permaculture’, which fascinated me. In a nutshell Permaculture seems to be the practice of growing food in a way that does not require vast quantities of fossil fuels. Apparently conventional farming with all the high tec, fuel hungry farm machinery plus processed animal feeds and fertilisers means modern farming pollutes rivers, kills the land, burns fossil fuels, generally accelerates global warming and creates a massive eco-footprint. The ecological cost of our food is dangerously high but……. the good news is; there are other ways of doing things.
Seems we need to think smaller and more back to basics. Wandering ducks and chickens fertilise the land so efficiently manufactured fertilisers are not needed (free range duck eggs are a bonus), a wild life pond full of hungry frogs gets rid of slugs and snails, no more nasty insecticides.  Native trees with berries encourage song birds;  and allowing native wild plants (weeds to conventional farmers) to flourish ensures bees and butterflies return to the land in abundance.  Once there they pollinate and keep the whole thing ticking over nicely. 

The film also encourages what it referred to as ‘’vertical growing’’ as opposed to ‘’horizontal growing’’. Basically this seems to mean allowing fruit and nut trees to grow and then growing other things in layers downwards.

As well as maximising the use of land this prevents soil erosion and top soil blowing away. I have the film on DVD and if I had the faintest idea how to do it I would post it in YouTube for all to see. There are other short clips on YouTube about Permaculture but from what I can see they are not as good as the film I watched.

Anyway……………. I was inspired and had some small fruit bushes delivered almost as soon as I came home. How fortunate that this is the time of year to plant fruit. I have planted blackberries, blueberries, white currants, red currants and strawberries. I also have some tiny saplings bought back from my sisters garden, two Victoria plum trees and one damson Tree. When I say ‘’tree’’ I use the term optimistically; these saplings are barely two inches tall at the moment.

While out in the garden I had quite a lot of tidying to do before I could plant the fruit. There were fallen leaves every where AND; I couldn’t help noticing how well my small raised garden was looking, maybe you remember this was just a pile of rubble in the summer and look at it now.

Now I’m on the look out for a hazel nut tree, hazel nut seems to be the native nut tree that is the fastest growing and produces the best crop. My plot of land is tiny, but I’m going to give it a go.

I’ve already made blackberry jam this year (subject of previous blog) AND I picked a whole load of Rowan berries and made some quite sharp but delicious Rowan marmalade. I was a little concerned about using the Rowan berries due to their bad press and supposedly being poisonous. Seems the truth is that Rowan berries are indeed poisonous to humans in their raw form because they contain parasorbic acid, however…. Cooking the Rowan berries converts the toxic Parasorbic acid into harmless sorbic acid. And lets face it………….nothing gets cooked as much as a pan of jam on the stove!!

Anyway, my thinking is to get a Rowan berry tree of my own because you can never be sure what the wild berries are exposed to. The blackberries I picked this year came from the side of a railway line and the Rowan berries came from the same area. Soon I hope to be picking them from my own garden and away from any possible pollution from the trains.

One of my sisters has set up a fish tank and I told her once home I would take some pictures of my fish and send them to her, and here they are.Thought a couple of shots of my fish would be a good way to finish. 
And that concludes my ‘update’. I’m now almost over the cold or what ever it was and back at work, life has returned to normal and I’m
 already counting the days until the Christmas holidays.

 

And then we made blackberry jam

Think I mentioned I took the grandchildren blackberrying and then made jam………………………

Ok so here are the pictures of the day. There were quite a lot of fallen trees and the burn was high and fast, remember this is just three days after the high winds and dust storm I was caught in on Saturday, the evidence of this was every where. I did notice that we’re getting our autumn colours which is lovely.

I was standing watching small brown trout in the burn, and you would have had photos, but as I was about to click the dog decided to go for a swim and disrupted every thing. After that there was no chance of seeing anything in the burn.

I heard bird song, so loud and clear and then I spotted the little robin singing its heart out on the branch just a few feet away from us. This time I decided to concentrate on pointing it out to the kids rather than trying to take photos, I didn’t want to scare him away.

It never ceases to amaze me how little modern children seem to know. For all their education they don’t know a robin from a thrush and until I pointed out the blackberries they had no idea which berries you could eat.

They think berries for eating come from the supermarket wrapped in plastic. As for identifying trees, not a hope in hell, they haven’t a clue.

I’m sure I was taught the difference between a beech leaf and an oak leaf when I was at school, seems modern educators don’t deem this necessary.  Not the kids fault I suppose, just a sign of the times but how sad. Anyway, we had a great time, they made jam and went home happy.

Poetry Wednesday; Blackberry Picking.

This week I took my grandchildren blackberry picking and then showed them how to make jam. To my utter amazement, they had a whale of a time, seems the simple pleasures of life do still amuse children even in this age of electronic wizardry.

Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

I have one comment to make about this poem;  ……………..his mother should have shown him how to avoid the dreaded mould and make jam
 

Seamus Heaney

Heaney was born on 13th. April 1939, the eldest of nine children at the family farm called Mossbawn in the Townland of Tamniarn near Castledawson, Northern Ireland, about thirty miles north-west of Belfast and two miles north-east of Magherafelt. As well as being a farmer, his father Patrick was also a cattle dealer and was a popular figure at cattle markets and fairs throughout the district. His mother Margaret was a member of the well-known McCann family from Castledawson, many of whom worked in the local Clark’s linen factory. His family were Catholic and he was raised in the Irish Nationalist tradition.

Read more here on his web site.

http://www.seamusheaney.org/

Art work by John George Brown

John George Brown studied first at Newcastle-on-Tyne England, then at The Edinburgh Academy Scotland, after which he moved to New York (in 1853) and continued his studies at the National Academy of Design. He later became a member of the Academy of Design, a charter member of the Water-Colour Society and president of the Water Colour Society from 1887 to 1904. He generally but not exclusively, confined himself to representations of street child life.

http://www.artsender.com/artists/Brown_John_George.htm