First apples

 

The apples are late this year. I suspect the near drought conditions in which I live at the moment has delayed the crop. We could do with some rain to fatten up the apples before they are picked. Nevertheless, we have had some apples. As you can see, they are far from being eatable for humans. These are windfall and are for the goats. They love them.

How to make gooseberry chutney - video

 

I made some gooseberry chutney recently. Lots of ingredients but easy to make. Here's my video - I list all the ingredients so be ready with pen and paper.

How to make gooseberry chutney

 

We have picked all our gooseberries and have made jam and fruit liqueurs with them. The last batch is today in the preserving pan to make chutney. Here are the ingredients:

• 1kg gooseberries
• 800g apples
• 600g onions
• 150g sultanas
• 2 red chillies (dried and chopped)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1kg sugar
• 700ml apple cider vinegar
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp coriander
• 1tsp mustard seeds
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 8 cardamon seeds
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground black pepper

Put all ingredients into the preserving pan, bring to the boil, let it simmer until it is reduced down to the consistency of a thick sauce. Then put into jars. Leave a couple of weeks before you start to use it.

Lovage and vegetable soup

 

We have an abundance of lovage but it won't last much longer. We have therefore picked some to use in soup. We found some vegetable soup in the freezer, decided it was time to use it up, thawed it and added in chopped lovage before simmering it again.

Well into preserve-making season

 

We have had a good crop of redcurrants and gooseberries but the amount of raspberries and blackcurrants has been disappointing. Nevertheless, we are making lots of preserves including fruit liqueurs. For the first time, we have used apples in fruit liqueurs (apple vodka). Most apples aren't ready for picking but a handful were just about big enough to collect.

Jam-making has progressed well but we still have a big quantity of gooseberries and redcurrants to use up. I'm about to turn some of the gooseberries into jelly. This is a 2 day process - boil up and then simmer the fruit, strain it and then put back into the preserving pan with sugar and heat.

A mountain of redcurrants

 

We have just harvested our biggest crop of redcurrants. Quite what we will do with them is the great unanswered question of the day. So far we have made redcurrant gin. We have 2 bucketfuls still to use up. I suspect most will be used to make jam.

Firewood in abundance

 

Some of the big branches that broke away from our oak trees at the south end of our hayfield have been chainsawed. They still need to be split but we have started to move them to our compound where the log splitter will be used.We won't use them this autumn and winter on our stove. Instead, they will be left to dry for a year. We have plenty of firewood from other sources.