Preserving a Lifestyle - Tuesday, 22nd September 2015 - and Christmas too!

Making preserves for home eating, giving pots to family and friends for Christmas, is just the darnedest things you can do at home, really it is, and its something I've been doing for years.  Even watching Aunts and other family members make a batch of marmalade, chutney and jellies has been enjoyable too and here I am now, vowing not to pick another berry or drupe and definitely not one single sloe......!  Yet the temptation is just too strong and especially so this  year for there's simply masses of it about everywhere and well, who knows how the world may be next year, or what else you'll be doing?

jelly potting-up tools

The gathering has been easy and the picking too, just an easy stretch of the arm to hand down a fistful of fruit, from tiny blue-tinged sloe drupe, the blackberry fruit, each one a collection of small drupelets to the crab apple hanging down like gold and scarlet earrings or thickly clustered up on high for the birds to feast on.  There's more than enough fruit for all to gather in this year and what better excuse to get out and about at the weekend, than to go into the countryside with basket to hand and go a'brambling'. Don't forget your Wellington boots or a stout walking stick to haul down the higher branches, but carefully, lest you break off a branch!  You must always be conscious of next year's harvest in the making.

my pan of damsons and crab apples cooking yesterday......

So, my last batch of crab apple and damson juice is dripping nicely thru' butter muslin right now as I contemplate the end of this year's preserving season

but yet, still, the news of great harvests of sloe drupes gathering in the hedgerow this  year is excitement in the making and the inner voice coaxing, even compelling.  Yet, we should all remain calm in the face of such a gathering of fruit, for the sloe simply must be allowed to remain clinging to its branch until after the first frost, for the  chemical reaction to be kicked into touch and the fruit become sweeter.  Yet its almost impossible to forgo sauntering out into country lanes and bye ways on a bright autumnal afternoon and not return ladened with baskets of this gloriously glossy berry.

glossy elderberries...

Stay the hand, please do, and wait for that first frost before you go a'plundering the lanes, eyes cast heavenward in your searchings, for the fruit will still be there, hiding amongst the leaves and prickly thorns.  Certainly this is a must if you're determined upon sloe gin for next year's Christmas season for presents or tippling round the fire, for recipes tell you to needle prick each sloe before use, with a thorn taken from the blackthorn tree or a silver fork if, you like me, follow folklore advice against using just any metal utensil. That's a chore too many for me and  I would much rather allow nature's own hand to prep' the fruit for me than labour over it myself!

a rainbow shines thru' threatening rain clouds...

Modern thought is that you may easily pick your fruit when ever you find it, then freezing your bounty until you're ready to use it.  Country-folk may wait happily for that first frost but if you're only out on warmer autumn days, the opportunity of picking sloes may just be too compelling to ignore.

So will I go sloe gathering this autumn.....um let me think about that for a while!  You see my problem is that the freezer is already full of garden produce which means I really may just have to wait for that first frost...desperately hoping a few sloe will still be hanging about for me!!!

as you see there are masses of elderberries about just now!

Happy days...

Daisy xxx