elderflower fizz

Well here's another joy of summer. The smell, the taste, the feel, the...quest before the very brief season of the flowers of the elder passes for another year.

This part of North Cornwall seems to have a remarkable shortage of elderflowers - or maybe everyone else has thought of this before us - but this at least makes for lots of sunny bike rides and walks searching the lovely lanes and paths near us. Oh, how spiffing famous five! In fact, you don't need to thwart too many baddies and jaunt off on ever so many jolly jaunts to do your thing - a bag full of heads (flowers, not Russians) will do it. And remember, children, to leave lots of flowers for other fizz makers, and for the insects and tree itself!

As I'm somehow in Enid / Delia mode, thought I'd lecture a little more. You probably know how to suck eggs etc, in which case please ignore all below.

I can't remember exactly what we did, chucking lots of stuff together, but here's the River Cottage recipe which sounds about right Hugh.. This makes 6 litres = about 7 bottles*

4 litres hot water

700g sugar

Juice and zest of four lemons

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

About 15 elderflower heads, in full bloom

A pinch of dried yeast (if it's not clearly fermenting after a couple of days)

Mix it all in a fat pan or mixing bowl, cover with tea towel and leave for a few days. Then strain through muslin cloth into old wine bottles, *leaving a few inches at the gap to allow gases to fill, thus hopefully avoiding nasty explosions (best to store somewhere nice and remote just in case...) We mainly used screw top bottles, but tried a couple of posh Grolsch type flip top jobs as well. I wouldn't recommend the latter - when you open them you feel like Jenson Button or some other brilliantly named driver, but unfortunately lose most of it as it erupts out. Screw tops can control release..

 

Leave in bottles for at least a week, and drink with barbecue etc. Lubly jubly. If you tuck in after a week, wonderfully fragrant and sweet but hardly alcoholic; leave a few weeks longer and dryer but more pokey - the choice is yours.. Discovered it's also very good on fruit salad - if you happen to be feeling healthy, and in the sweet position of having no OJ but a cellar (thought we'd store it in the hole under the cabin) of this stuff.

 

 

Tiny bit more here.

 

 

Bluebell Wood

I've never properly appreciated bluebells until now. I've wandered Trelay's couple of acres of woodland since October and loved the peace and timelessness of the trees and bracken and valleys, but it's often felt dark and dank and dying. Now, suddenly, the wood's floor has delighted into life. There are pansies, cowslips and three-cornered leeks, and I love the weird and wonderful coiled ferns; but these lovely ladies are surely the daddies, or something along those silly sexy lines.

 

Click on one to big it up and scroll through.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Truly, Spring is Sprung

We'll no doubt have more gales, hail, plagues of frogs and locusts and all sorts of mayhem - and when we do, it's not my fault for declaring it's well and truly Spring. We've certainly had lots of that sort of stuff since the last Spring post in Feb. The sun is shining, the weather is hot, your mama's good lookin, the cotton is high (ok, not that one, but it's not summertime quite yet). But we do have all sorts of amazing growth.

Daffs have been replaced by the most amazing bluebells in the wood (which I thought deserved their own page). Apple trees have turned pink, bigger trees have turned green, and to my great relief and satisfaction, the blackthorn and sycamore hedges that we laid over winter have also sprouted leaves, which seems really miraculous given the ferociously hacked, crazy thin slivers that keep their newly horizontal branches connected to the soil.

The first new greens in the veg patch are pushing through the cracked earth in neatish rows, and the leaves of our experimental permaculturalish 'no-dig' spuds are thankfully breaking out of last year's sodden hay, and top-up chicken poo hay from over the fence.

The polytunnel has evolved from a grey wintry haven of relative warmth to a colourful heaven of fertile heat, our composted waste outside the tunnel obviously a big source of that fecundity. So nice to be able to pick spinach, beans, mint, herbs, marigolds and all sorts of spicy salad leaves already; and just to gently hang out there with the weeds, cricket, and purring cat.

Talking of odd felines, they seem to have made friends with Trelay's new Dexter cow and calf. And everyone's made friends with the other Spring additions of three rescue ponies in the top field - whether or not they'll be of any use helping haul timber out of the woods remains to be seen, but they're certainly good therapy value. And good to see the notsopigletish piglets out and about in the sun, or wallowing in their wallows.

There's also lots of evidence about the place of slightly less organic production - the incredible transformation of the carpark thanks to diggers and dumpers and lots of (other people's) hard work, new steps down to the house (ditto), newly exposed cobbled yards, etc.

Lots of photos of all this to follow, taken over the last couple of months - again, probably best to click on the first and then scroll through.

10 points if you name all the flowers, 20 if you find Wally.