Sunday 25 June 2017

Are we going to get some sloes this year?

sloes June 17

For a number of years, we've had no sloes on the local hedgerows. I'm hoping for an improvement in 2017. I've had a look at the hedgerows yesterday while I was picking leaves for the goats. I spotted sloes growing on the blackthorn. Fingers crossed I'll be make sloe gin in the autumn!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Jonathan, I'd like to ask a question...I've been going through your old posts (since I am laid up on the sofa with an injured ankle) and I'm wondering what you've concluded from your efforts to go refined flour/sugar-free. There's an attempt at using nut flours etc but no word on that in recent posts. Like you, I'm interested in trying the same thing for environmental reasons. Have you decided that the effort wasn't worth it? Too difficult? Thanks for your time.

Jonathan Wallace said...

We need to use refined sugar in preserve making. The main way to replace sugar in other recipes is to use honey. Alas, all our hives died out over the winter. We hope to buy a couple of new colonies this week. With regards to flour, we are still experimenting with potatoes though when baking, some flour needs to be mixed with the potato for making pastry and bread. We haven't done much recently on making nut or acorn flour. Hazel nut flour is a possibility this autumn. Acorns are very bitter and need lots of boiling to drive off the tanin taste. On an electric cooker, that is a waste. On a wood fired stove, the economics are better (we have lots of wood to burn so there's no financial cost to us). Watch out this autumn as we hope to have more posts about this.