Harvest Bounty

[xylaria]

Me and children have just had a very productive day hedgerow foraging.

We got 1 lb of rosehips, 1lb of haws, 2kg of apples, 2kgs of blackberry, a handful of sloes, and handful of elderberries, we also saw quite a few heavily laden hazels but the nuts are little young.

The sloes and the elderberries are going in my jug of rum for drinking at christmas. The apples and blackberries have made the large pie and a jar of preserve. I am stewing up the rose hips to make a syrup that will then have the haws cooked in it. Hopeful it should make a delicious and usual spread.

My favorite time of year.

The fruit crop is very heavy around here, the rusk sack was really hefty when coming home. So who else is coming home with more stuff than they left the house with, and what are doing with it?

PS I still have more apples than I know what to do with, so any suggestions? ( I normally pick what I need, but they really nice apples looking all shiney and ripe on the tree and i couldn't resist

 

[Tadpole]

Me and children have just had a very productive day hedgerow foraging.

We got 1 lb of rosehips, 1lb of haws, 2kg of apples, 2kgs of blackberry, a handful of sloes, and handful of elderberries, we also saw quite a few heavily laden hazels but the nuts are little young.

The sloes and the elderberries are going in my jug of rum for drinking at christmas. The apples and blackberries have made the large pie and a jar of preserve. I am stewing up the rose hips to make a syrup that will then have the haws cooked in it. Hopeful it should make a delicious and usual spread.

My favorite time of year.

The fruit crop is very heavy around here, the rusk sack was really hefty when coming home. So who else is coming home with more stuff than they left the house with, and what are doing with it?

PS I still have more apples than I know what to do with, so any suggestions? ( I normally pick what I need, but they really nice apples looking all shiney and ripe on the tree and i couldn't resist

Sadly, my local council saw fit to trim the hedges and overgrown brambles, all along my walking routes just a few days ago, so to harvest the blackberry, rosehip and haws , will need the assistance of a stepladder. My wife still managed to pick a bag of wild apples, and a couple of litres of blackberries today; I will be out tomorrow looking for cherries, wild plums, and check on the bullaces. I will miss out on my crab-apples as some kind soul has dug a trench through the roots, the tree is still alive but there is no fruit.

 

[xylaria]

My council have planted sea buckthorne and what I think may be loganberries, in their bedding only problem is that it lines the A50 duel carriageway. They are really good at letting the japanese knotweed grow, but they mow the native bluebells down.

Tadpole train your little one or the wife to stand on your shoulders. Walking sticks are good tools as well, but it sounds like you are been successful enough.

 

[KAE1]

Xylaria, sounds like you had a nice forage. A bit early for picking sloes though? I don't usually harvest mine til October - If I waited til the first frost it would be February.I had a loganberry (thornless) which has rooted itself and seems to have reverted back to raspberry.

I love hazelnuts or cob nuts as we call them but the squirrels usually get them before they are ripe

 

[leon-b]

The sloes round my way are ready for picking, i think i will do a bit of foraging today, get some sloes and elderberries for the gin and some blackberrys to go in a cake
leon

 

[xylaria]

Only a handful of the sloes were black the rest were no-where near ripe. The jug of rum is done the same way you would sloe gin, except you add differant fruits through the year. It has bilberries blackberries, cherry plums, yellow plums, elderberries and sloe so far.

The haws were not quite ready either, they were too hard to process and lacked sweetness. But then you have to try these things out, to learn.

 

[KAE1]

Sounds like a really interesting rum infusion. Even though the sloes are black I usually give it another month at least otherwise you can end up with a very sharp gin. Of course you could add more sugar to taste but true fruit ripeness is my preference.

 

[spamel]

I have a massive overgrown patch outside the back garden, spent a bit of time this morning cutting a path through with Sting (my machete, not the singer!) and my trusty secateurs. Nothing but brambles grow in there, well, stinging nettles and some willowherb aswell as a few other things, but the blackberries, or brambles are thick and ripe! I now have purple hands after picking loads with the kids, they are covered too. My kit is also stained where I pushed up against the brambles to get even closer to the good ones!

My Mum comes back from Scotland tommorow, it was her birthday whilst she was up there and it has been many years since she took us kids out with our grandparents collecting blackberries to make into blackberry pies. I think it is time she stepped up as the grandma and came with our kids to pick brambles! Looks like I'll be eating blackberry pies for the next few weeks, oh what a shame!

There is also a tree that is laden with fruit, can't quite make my mind up if they are crab apples or pears! They seem to be more pear shaped than apple shaped but they are really small. Whatever, if I grab some and cook them in a pie, I'm sure they'll taste great!

I love the glut of fruit at this time of year, but the missus wasn't too impressed with the berry stained clothes and children!

 

[KAE1]

Any excuse to get the machete out hey.If they are crab apples they make a godd jelly/jam

 

[spamel]

And here is my pie! Made with, erm, ingredients and stuff to an exacting recipe of a bit of this and a bit of that! Raisins, sultanas and blackberries, some cinnamon and brown sugar, and I didn't have a shallow pie dish so a cake tin had to do! I like 3 inch deep pies!

It will be tested later on, I hope it tastes as nice as it smells! The holes in the pastry were done on purpose, honest. WHAT? THIS ISN'T MASTER CHEF YOU KNOW!

 

[Toadflax]

Well, I'd been meaning to check out the local blackberries and Xylaria's post inspired me to do it on a wet Saturday afternoon. At least it proved that my new waterproof socks (Sealskinz) worked - water was sloshing around in my boots, but my feet were completely dry.

I was a bit concerned that I was too early, as most of the bushes had only half a dozen or so ripe berries, but then I struck gold with a bush that was loaded. Got myself about 1 3/4 lb of blackberries. But while looking for these, I also found an apple tree and got 4 lb, also about 12oz of sloes (is there anything you can do with them other than make sloe gin?) and some really red haws (but when I got them home they were unfit to use - hard as little cannon balls).

All in all, an enjoyable afternoon, despite the teeming rain. And here's the remains of my blackberry and apple crumble.


Geoff

 

[John Fenna]

I was always told that if you pick your sloes before they feel a frost they will be very tart, as the frost starts some sort of enzyme breakdown in the fruit. I don't know how true this is but I always put the sloes in the freezer to frost them if nature fails and my sloe gin is always vey more-ish.....too more-ish!

 

[xylaria]

Those pies look scrummy, I want one for breakfast

There is quite a few fruits that need a bit of bletting or a haw frost to sweeten them. Really useful tip John for getting around the weather. Haws still need to be left until they dont go green when you cook them I think. The jug of rum has so many differant sweet fruits in it I don't think a handful super tart sloes with make much a differance.

Blackberries make a really soft rich fruit leather aswell, mine got eaten really quicky.

Any tips on what do with glut of apples?

 

[John Fenna]

Apples are great in salads, pies, stirfries, sauces and of course CIDER!

 

[KAE1]

I was always told that if you pick your sloes before they feel a frost they will be very tart, as the frost starts some sort of enzyme breakdown in the fruit. I don't know how true this is but I always put the sloes in the freezer to frost them if nature fails and my sloe gin is always vey more-ish.....too more-ish!

John, I think its more a timing thing, to give them time to ripen, our family addage was to wait til most of the blackthorn leaves have dropped for same reason - give them time to ripen.
However bunging in freezer makes the skins split when they thaw out so no need to *****.

 

[Toadflax]

But trying to pick the haws yesterday made me realise that I must make a berry picker...will have to try the one in the articles section. Does anyone have any suggestions for the spacing of the skewers. I guess that if they are spaced to be able to get haws then that's probably good enough for me, as I'm nowhere near any moorland, so no chance of bilberries.


Geoff

 

[janiepopps]

Any tips on what do with glut of apples?

Hi Xylaria, we have an apple orchard and tend to cook up the leftover apple and freeze in largish portions to use throughout the year in pies sauces etc.

Keep meaning to try to make cider but I as I dont particularly like the stuff the motivation just isn't there!

 

[xylaria]

But trying to pick the haws yesterday made me realise that I must make a berry picker...will have to try the one in the articles section. Does anyone have any suggestions for the spacing of the skewers. I guess that if they are spaced to be able to get haws then that's probably good enough for me, as I'm nowhere near any moorland, so no chance of bilberries.


Geoff

If you can get hold of one a metal afro comb will do the job, but they can very hard to get hold off even in areas with an ethnic population. My favorite trick is to hang a basket on the branch you are picking from, and then use both hands as a comb and drop the fruit into the basket. If they are ripe they fall off. There is three types of of hawthorne is britian and some are more thorny I know hand picking is much easlier from C. monogyna, which i think is the native one. The type the glastonbury thorne is was intruduced by the crusades.

Bilberries should be over by now, I picked them a month a go. The good thing with the jug of rum reciepe is that you can keep adding fruit as it comes in. If I had started it earlier i would put strawbs and raspberries in it as well.

 

[Toadflax]

What I did yesterday was put each hand through one of the handles of a carrier bag so that the bag hung open between my hands and then I could just pull the haws off and drop them straight into the bag...

...but I think that a wooden berry picker would look more elegant!



Geoff

 

[PJMCBear]

Not doing too bad at the moment. I keep going out and picking stuff up for making wine (drinking it is my hobby, not making it).

Currently in the freezer:

8lb Rowanberries (Enough for 2 gallon).
4 pints of Elderflower (4 gallon).
3lb of Elderberries (1 gallon - almost).
4 lb of bilberries (1 gallon).
8 lb of blackberries (2 gallon, but growing every weekend).
About 9lb of crab apples (to be mixed with other fruit).

Should keep the liver pickled for a while, and it's not finished for the year.