Summer Foraging

It is finally that time.  We have been waiting eagerly for the elderflowers to bloom, and as we were driving around last week, we knew that the weekend would be our prime opportunity.  I cannot remember a year when the elderflowers were so prolific.  I am not sure if they are just boasting that they survived our frigid winter or if the county simply has not gotten to mowing them down yet, regardless, it led to quite a bounty!

Elderflowers make our favorite cordial and Charlie especially has been asking after it since mid-March.  We drove the county roads and walked some railroad tracks and easily collected nine grocery sacks full of perfect flower heads.  After hours of separating them from their stems, the result was a five gallon crock full of flowers that are going to spend the next several days steeping in a simple syrup/acid mixture and becoming cordial.

We were just in a foraging kind of mood yesterday and we decided to hike back into the heavily wooded part of our property to the black raspberry bramble that was just starting a couple of years ago.  I am happy to say, that it has turned into a very large bramble that we traipsed through collecting four pounds of ripe berries.

Last winter while we were surviving the 'polar vortex', I came across an article about berry shrubs.  Then a couple of weeks ago I was reminded about them when julochka posted that she had just made some.  These fresh drink mixes were used primarily prior to refrigeration as a way to preserve an abundance of fruits and were drank as a precursor to soda.  The concoction is fresh fruit, sugar and vinegar.  There are several recipes out there, but we went for it a bit on our own.  We took quart mason jars and filled them to just below the shoulder with berries, then dissolved  2 cups of sugar in 2 cups of vinegar.  We did one cup apple cider vinegar, and one cup of our homemade red wine vinegar.  Poured the mixture over the berries to fill the jars, where they will sit for a week or so before use.

The four pounds of black raspberries yielded four quarts of shrub.  We did an additional quart using our first gooseberries of the season.  I can't wait to take a taste, I have a feeling that there will be many more shrubs made as the garden progresses!

Speaking of the 'polar vortex'  I hope this possibility does not affect our tomatoes ripening!

Unintended Perfection

For the last several years I have drooled over my blogging friends' posts of wild violet jelly.  These beautiful little flowers come and go quickly in early spring and I tend to be so busy gazing upon them and taking pictures that they are past their peak when I think about harvesting them.  This year I remembered to go out just in time. I sat in the middle of our large patch of these native beauties, and took pictures while I picked.

We have made jams and jellies for years and it is always a great experiment.  It seems that every time I use a recipe calling for pectin, no matter what the volume, the jellies never set up. Upon the suggestion of a friend last year I purchased River Cottage's Preserves Handbook.  I cannot recommend a better book for the home preserver.  The suggestion for pectin rich fruits to compliment the fruits, flowers, or herbs that are bring preserved is brilliant.  Every jam or jelly that I have done with these recipes have set up beautifully, with no added pectin.

Our wild violet adventure has been much the same.  I found from multiple sources the same basic recipe for violet jelly.  They all called for making a violet tea of sorts, then adding sugar, lemon juice and pectin and boiling for 10 minutes.  Alas, it was tasty, but a little too tart for our taste and it only partially set up.  Since I remembered to harvest flowers early enough this year, we were able to do a round two, and I went back to my tried and true River Cottage book. I much prefer the methods in this book and the flavor is absolutely beautiful, though for this medium it turned out as a lovely rich syrup, a perfect cordial, not jelly.  

Though I went in with the intent for jelly, I will stick to berries for that.  Our state flower seems destined to be the flavoring for homemade sodas, with or without a splash of vodka, and I am perfectly OK with unintended perfection.

Wild Violet Cordial

3.2 lbs apples, rough cut

6 C violets, rinsed & packed cups

Sugar (by volume, see below)

7 Tbsp. Apple cider vinegar

Place apples and violets in a sauce pan and just cover with water.  Bring to boil and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally.  Place mixture in straining bag and separate liquid (this takes 2-3 hours, we hang the straining bag over a bowl and for this volume re purpose our honey strainer, our jelly bags were too small).  Measure out your liquid and add it back to the saucepan with equal amounts of sugar.  For me this was 9 1/2 Cups.  Add the vinegar and boil until it reaches 220 F.  Skim any scum (the violets had virtually none), bottle & enjoy!

A Little Bit of Summer Bliss

Last fall we went foraging for elderberries when we made our first batch of wine.  It is coming along nicely and we are excited to bottle it this coming fall.  In the last couple of weeks the elderberry bushes have been full of flowers.  We decided to scope out locations of the plants now, because the flowers really make them stand out.  This way when we head out this fall, we should be able to find them more readily.  Since we were out anyway, we took a large brown paper bag and filled it with elderflowers.  I have heard so much discussion about how elderflower cordial is amazing, and since I'm in the cordial making kind of mood, we did just that. 

This was a great task to get the whole family involved with.  Since the stems are mildly toxic, we needed to remove all of the flowers.  This process was surprisingly easy and we found they brushed off quite well.

What we ended up with was just over eight cups of elderflowers.  We began by making a simple syrup in a stockpot of 5 cups of sugar and 3 quarts of water.  We cooked it until all of the sugar was completely dissolved.  While that was happening we transfered the flowers into a small crock and combined the grated the zest of one lemon and juice of three.  We were winging it on this recipe due to the volume of flowers and several of the recipes we found all had different techniques.

What is different about making this cordial as compared to the fruit cordials that I have been pumping out, is that instead of  cooking, macerating, and then straining the fruit into beautiful cordials, this one steeps like a tea.  Once that simple syrup was completed we poured it over the flowers and citrus, covered the crock and let it steep for three days. 

At the end of that time, we strained it and transferred it into quart jars that are now in the fridge and ready to use.  It was a little sweet for our taste so we added some of our acid blend (that we had on hand for wine making) to it.  This could also have been accomplished by adding more lemon juice.  We included these cute little jars in this weeks farm bags. 

One thing that I am loving about this cordial is that a little goes a long way, therefore allowing the amount we made to last longer.  I have found with the fruit cordials, I use more of them to get the desired taste/effect.  With the elderflower, we use 2 (me) to 4 (B) Tbsp. to 8 oz of liquid.  So seltzer water for soda.  I'm looking forward to trying it as part of a martini, maybe this evening.  This refreshing cordial tastes like elderflowers smell and that is a little bit of summer bliss.

Silent Sunday

A Remarkable Season~ Garden Update

This has been truly a remarkable growing season for us.  We began with cooler than normal temperatures all through June, only to be thrown into almost two months of warmer than normal temperatures.  We have had next to no rain, the irrigation in the garden has worked great and we haven't had to mow near so much, yet the grass looks much like mottled, fresh cut hay.  Then, this week we had our first light frost on September 14th!!!  Let me put this in perspective for you.  We typically have our first frost right around Halloween.  It seems every year we think we are going to get cold and then have a lovely Indian Summer.  Then just as we approach a time when the kids are going to be trick-or-treating, they have to have coats on over costumes.  This week our highs have averaged in the upper 50's!  There are hints of sprinkles in the forecast, as well as a return to more seasonal weather (low 70's) for a couple of days.

What this all means??  Well, we have seen throughout this season that the garden has run roughly two to two and a half weeks behind schedule.  We normally process the bulk of our tomatoes during the last couple of weeks of August and first two weeks of September.  Just as our vines, heavy with fruit, were starting to ripen, it turned cold and everything seems to be in a state of pause.  Because of the extreme variations in weather, I stopped doing weekly newsletters/inventory lists on our farm bags.  I am varying their contents slightly from person to person depending on what has ripened that day.  The weather has been great for fall crops and this weeks farm bags consisted of Leeks, Beet Greens, Kale, Green Beans, and a few partially ripe tomatoes to be put in warm windows for a few days. 

Take a look at my post over at a sustainable life, where I discussed our first adventures in wine making.  This in mind, B and I spent several hours yesterday taking a country drive and foraging for elder berries and wild grapes along roadsides and ditches.  We came away with a 1/2 bushel of each and enough to start a five gallon barrel of wine.  For my purposes, I am stealing about 2 pounds of the elder berries to make some cordial.

This property once had a working orchard on it.  Sadly, after decades of neglect there are only a few gnarly trees remaining in various states of deterioration.  The apples are bumpy and nothing to look at, but this year (probably because of the drought) seem to be intensely flavored and amazing.  We collected a volume of fallen apples cut away the bad, kept the good and canned some amazing applesauce yesterday!  Adding to the homestead to do list...we are researching taking cuttings of these old trees so we can re-populate the orchard and one day never have need to go beyond our backyard.

I'm off to de-stem elderberries, and simmer some cordial!  Happy Weekend!!

Into the Bramble

 On a stiflingly hot day

escape into the shade of the forest.

Take great care

and forage

into the bramble bush.

For your patience

receive

lovely stained fingertips

and sweet rewards.