Trying to find the time

Since I have moved in I have been so busy I have hardly had time for any of my interests. However things are slowly improving. I am getting some ex bats at the end of the month, four in all. The slaughter date is the 29th of May. What a horrible term, it will be the luck of the draw whether each chicken lives or dies! I hope to get a couple more chickens next year, perhaps some blue egg layers to ring the changes.

On the bee front, I am bereft! My only colony moved out last summer at the same time as I was moving house! I felt so depressed! I simply cannot afford the £140 being asked for a nuke, I have set up a couple of baits in the garden and live in hope! I read that bees are attracted to lemon grass oil so am regularly putting some drops by the entrance. Trouble is there seem hardly any bees around here. My neighbour has some bumble bees in his garden but honey bees are in very short supply. I can always go out swarm catching but have the most terrible fear of heights, I get vertigo changing the lightbulb!

Most of my time recently has been trying to get the garden sorted. I have planted several strandard roses and some clematis. Its taken my since January just to knit one sock!

On the self sufficiency/natural dyeing front I havent spun any yarn for ages. However someone mentioned to me that the apple tree I have been given for firewood may yield some interesting colours. On top of that, I notice the elderflowers are out! Its a question of what I can fit in!

No cider this year!

I very much doubt I will find the time and the equipment this year! I have two apple trees in my garden and have started to at least dry some of the apples. I wont be able to do any preserving either, I have no idea where my preserving pan has gone!

The good news is that I have a hazelnut tree in the back garden and it has quite a few nuts. Last year I collected wild nuts but these seem much larger so it may be a more commercial variety.

I have a proper fireplace so spent the day sawing wood.I really could do with a chain saw but am reliably informed that I won’t be able to handle it as it has too much of a kick. I have got a little Black and Decker Scorpion, that helps a lot, but the vibration makes my arm ache after half an hour! I hate having to ask for help, so if anyone has any bright ideas as to how I can cope with sawing tree trunks let me know! Bear in mind I am a grandmother!

One thing I do hope to do over the next few days is go mushrooming again, having survived the ones I collected last year!

Honey Show and propolis

Wax rose and propolis tincture

I went to the National Honey Show yesterday and really enjoyed it. I didn’t manange to get to all the things I wanted because I overslept, but I still found it very worthwhile. I went to a workshop on making wax flowers…see my effort. Now to be honest with you I am busy enough as it is, I hardly have time to make wax flowers! Still I enjoyed it, I like trying my hand at something different. I wanted to go to a lecture on propolis but it was so packed that it was spilling out into the corridoor. C’est la vie.  I have managed to extract some propolis and have started taking it, but need to get a lot more before I stand any chance of being able to take it regularly.

One of the most interesting books I have read recently is on propolis. It called, unsurpisingly ‘Bee Propolis Natural Healing from the Hive’ by James Fearnley. I have become interested in propolis as a succesor to antibiotics. If we dont stop overprescribing them we are heading for a disaster. I have included instructions on how to prepare propolis in alcohol. I will put up other preparations later. According to Fearnley it can be used as a tincture or as an internal remedy. Take a few drops a day to boost your immune system. Use externally for cuts, grazes etc( I am not sure the alcohol wouldnt sting, I havent tried it yet)

I also bought a book on making Mead. I did try some at a stall and liked it. I need more honey though if I am going to make Mead as well as sell some to pay the costs of beekeeping.

Propolis tincture recipe.

Remove any obvious contaminants for the propolis, such as wood, bees etc.

Cut into small pieces and put in a clean jar with a tight fitting lid. (I used a propolis screen which I put into the freezer for a few hours to make it brittle, it was much easier to remove)

Pour in commercial drinking grade alcohol, 70% proof produces the best results but ordinary spirits such as Vodka or Gin are perfectly acceptable.

To make a 25% alcohol extract you need 250 g of proplis plus 4 times that weight/volume in alcohol- i.e. approx 1 litre. I found that I was only making a very small amount and it worked out that it was just enough alcohol to barely cover the propolis.

Store in a warm dark place for at least a week and shake daily.Optimum extraction takes between ten to fourteen days.

Filter through a fine cloth or a coffee filter.

Place in the fridge for a couple of days and then filter again with the finest filter possible.

My cider turned out very well!

Happy to report that the cider making went very well, and I am on  my way through the second gallon! Once I has sorted out the fruit crushing I found it very easy. Much easier than wine making, in my humble opinion. With the credit crunch scaring the world to death its a very good way to economise!

A pleasant weekend bottling wine and making banana liqueur.

The weather was so gorgeous last weekend I felt almost human. I don’t know about you but I feel so much more energetic when the sun is out but its not too hot. I have been meaning to bottle some of my home made country wines for ages. As I prefer to do this out of doors I took the chance while the weather was nice. I can certainly think of worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than bottling, and simultaneously drinking (!) some wine.

I had some bottles of lemon wine left and when I opened one it had become sparkling. It was a little sharp, probably because the last of the sugar had converted to alcohol so I added a few sweeteners. This turned it into a pleasant light sparkling drink.

I never stick to the rules and sometimes it catches me out. Berry suggests you should keep accurate records of what you have done, but I never can be bothered. Now normally I know what is in a demijohn, but although I knew one contained honeysuckle wine, I have no idea what on earth the other contained as I had forgotten to label it. In any case neither are ready to drink so I bottled them, labelling one set ‘indeterminate’. As some of my cider was starting to clear I syphoned that off into a new demijohn.

indeterminate, cider, honeysuckle and sparkling lemon wine

In a fit of enthusiasm I also carried on with my liqueur making binge and made some banana liqueur - heres the recipe .

Banana liqueur

7 medium ripe bananas

750 ml brandy

400g sugar.

250 ml water.

Peel and slice bananas thinly

Place the bananas in a clean glass container with a tight fitting lid. Add the brandy, close tightly and leave to stand for five weeks in a warm spot. Shake regularly.

Pour the mixture first through a clean, dry sieve and then through four layers of cheesecloth. Set aside. Mix the sugar and water in a heavy bottomed pan and stir until the sugar has melted. Bring to the boil and boil for 12 minutes. Remove the syrup from the stove and leave to cool. Add the flavoured brandy to the cold syrup. Pour into a clean dry sterilised bottle and store for at least a month before use.

Blackberry Whisky

Due to popular demand I am putting up the recipe for this. I didn’t make any this year due to the wedding but definately will next year. Leave for as long as possible before drinking (within reason!)…..it improves with age.

400 g ( 14 ozs) blackberries

200 g (7 ozs) sugar

426ml ( 15fluid ozs) whisky

15 ml ( 1 tbs ) glycerol

5ml ( 1 tsp) citric acid .

Put alternate layers of blackberries and sugar in a wide necked jar and add the glycerol, citric acid and whisky. Cover the jar and leave for two days. Gently shake twice daily for the next three weeks before straining through a fine muslin cloth, gently squeezing the fruit to extract as much juice as possible. Return to the jar and allow to clear. Decant into clean dry sterilised bottle/s and keep for 6 months before drinking.

From The art of making wine and liqueurs by Betty Sampson

A quick request.

If you are visiting this site (particularly from the US) please help support our campaign against the Chinese fur trade. I run a seperate family friendly blog on the subject…see Boris’s campaigning blog on right. Please visit it and pass the details on to friends. The Chinese skin animals WHILE STILL CONSCIOUS for the fur trade and a large proportion is sent to the US market mislabelled as rabbit etc. and sold as trinkets toys etc. This is a disgraceful way to treat animals and completely unnecessary. Please boycott Chinese fur and pass the message on.

Thank you

Pear Liqueur

As promised.

pear liqueur

The strawberry liqueur I made a few days back is coming along fine ( right), so as I had a glut of pears I have made some pear as well. Its interesting that both the kilner jars hold approximately the same amount of liquid, it doesn’t look as though they do, does it? This is another recipe from Jean Dixons book.

2 cm piece of peeled ginger root.

500 g sugar

500 ml dry white wine

500 ml gin

500 g fresh table pears

5 whole cloves

Halve, seed and slice the pears

Place the pears, cloves, ginger and sugar in a heavy bottomed pot. Add the wine. Heat over a low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil.Remove the syrup from the stove and leave to cool.

Add the gin to the cold syrup. Pour the mixture into a clean glass or earthenware container, close tightly and leave to stand for a week in a warm spot . Shake every morning and evening.

Strain the mixture through two layers of cheesecloth, repeating if necessary.

Pour the liqueur into a dry sterilised bottle. Store for a month before use.

my wooden thing has gone funny!

I am a bit worried about my wooden fruit crusher. A useful tool but it seems to be suffering from the pounding and has started to split…..the nurse in me thinks this is very unhygenic,so its going into some bleach ( sorry folks I KNOW its not very green but I would rather be ungreen than down with food poisoning) I have had it drummed into me that wood is not a good thing to use in kitchens…too many germs…hard to make clean, traps germs ..you name it…on the other hand it IS useful, so I may try sticking it together and bleaching it regularly…If anyone knows where I can get another one of these in the UK I would be grateful, I looked on Ebay etc but couldnt find one.

A germ trap if ever I saw one!

Strawberry liqueur

I am told Strawberry Liqueur is rather sweeter than the other fruit liqueurs, because strawberries are naturally a sweeter fruit. It is recommended  poured over pancakes, or over the sponge in a trifle, and if you take a galia melon, cut it in half, and fill the middles with strawberry liqueur and perhaps a little sugar, with a garnish of rose petals or mint leaves, I gather you have a very impressive pud for very little effort! I will try it with pancakes for sure!