I thought the berry season was over with the frosts at the end of October, but with the air temperature in November so far above 0c I was able to harvest a few last blackberries (the bush has started flowering again) and 4 raspberries! Various pollinators had also emerged from hibernation including two hoverflies.
On Thursday this week we went for a forage locally as I’d heard reports that chantarelles were appearing after the rain….we didn’t see any edible fungi but there were large quantities of bilberries (blåbær), wild raspberries and even a bog where there were unpicked cloudberries, so we transferred our attentions to picking berries!
We started the walk from Fjølstadtrøa, a restored husmannsplass (croft) (we had met the last husmann and his wife back in the 80s!)
The local historical society has restored the buildings and a local school has made a vegetable garden here!
Nice to see broad beans (bondebønner), here with kale..
Catawissa (walking) onion (etasjeløk)
Beetroot (rødbete)
Herbs
Hops
Admiral
Gul korallsopp? (coral fungus)
Gul korallsopp? (coral fungus)
Creeping twinflower (Linnea)
Cowberry (tyttebær)
Cow-wheat seed (marimjelle)
This hoverfly (blomsterflue) fed on my bilberry stained finger!
I neither use sugar nor do I have a freezer. My favourite way of preserving fruit is drying and the quickest way of drying fruit in an oven is by making fruit leather…simply boil the fruit to sterilise and mashing as you boil, then pour into an oven tray and dry for a few hours at about 40C!
Have just finished a batch of redcurrants (rips) and raspberries (bringebær). The raspberries were both wild red raspberries, an old Norwegian yellow (gulbringebær) and a cultivar “White Russian”
See last year’s blog on raspberry / bilberry leather here: http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=13187
12th August Added pictures of leather made from cloudberries, bilberries and wild raspberries!
Fruit leather is a quick way to preserve a surplus of fruit. I neither use sugar nor Stevia and don’t have a freezer (by choice), so I dry a lot of fruit from the garden and nature . I had too many raspberries in the garden and also bilberries picked the other week in Hurdal. I just boiled and crushed the fruit with a little water and then poured it as a thin layer into an oven tray and dried at about 50C in an oven for a few hours! This is much quicker than drying the whole berries. The leather can then be kept in a cool dry place for several years. Delicious as a goody to offer visitors!
I used an old red raspberry, originally from the old railway station garden in Malvik, an old Norwegian yellow raspberry and “White Russian” (yellow with a white blush):
Late April 2017 and I finally got round to visit some folks in South Hampshire who I’d met at the Walled Kitchen Garden Forum weekend at Croome in 2015! I love enthusiastic people who are willing to take risks…Tim Phillips is one of these…in his own words “His once abandoned 19th century kitchen garden in Hampshire provides a fantastic environment for…Chardonnay, Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc vines. The combination of gravel soils, Lymington’s maritime climate and the thermal properties of the walls offer a unique vine-growing opportunity from which both still and sparkling wines are crafted”.. (see http://www.charlieherring.com/)
On the day of my visit, Tim had been up all night keeping his vines from freezing by burning wood fires in the vineyard….this strategy seems to have saved the crop from a complete failure of the 2017 vintage :) This problem wasn’t restricted to England but also famous wine growing areas in France: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/29/in-pictures-french-farmers-use-fire-to-try-to-save-their-vineyards.html
I look forward to returning in a few years to view you sea kale production areas ;)
I first met Tim’s world at the Walled Kitchen Garden Forum weekend at Croome in 2015…here’s him adressing the enthusiastic crowd!
Tim produces Charlie Herring wines from the vineyard!
…and I was lucky enough to be given a couple of bottles of Hampshire wine, here shown atop my own walled garden (the world’s lowest) which used to serve as the base of my greenhouse…
Arriving at the vineyard..it is much higher on the outside than the inside! A couple of old bricklayers are working on restoring the walls, removing the invading ivy!
Tim had been up most of the previous night burning wood in various places in an attempt to drive the frost away…Tim told me after that about 80% of shoots had survived, so not as big a disaster as had been feared…
The beginnings of Tim’s Hampshire Tea enterprise!
A great old organic apple tree at one end of the walled garden!
Windows would have been used here to ripen fruit early..
Tim told me that this Swiss chard kept on coming back…perennial or seeding itself?
Another apple tree
This is where we’ve decided Tim will grow Sea Kale ;)
Cardoon and nettle infested compost heap :) I teached TIm how to eat raw nettle ;)
The raspberries had been frosted…
There’s a wonderful sunken greenhouse in the walled garden
The greenhouse…
…with a Robin nesting at one end!
Ongoing wall restoration…
Perennial vegetables fit well with the perennial vines, tea and apples!
Charlie Herring wines…
After lunch at a local pub, when we were joined by Susan Campbell, who I was visiting in the afternoon, Tim took us to his winery and adjacent land!
I loved the wallpaper, old maps reflecting Tim’s unexpected past of motorbike racer (Isle of Man) and mountain walking maps
…including a map showing my next stop at Susan Campbell’s wonderful house and garden (including sea kale yard) on the Solent!
Tim’s pond with Yellow flag, Bulrushes (supermarket of the swamps), water mint etc.
Susan found some St. George’s Mushrooms, although a bit old!
Tim wanted to show me this amazing hop that he’d used for making a wild hop beer!
….and edible hop shoots coming up all over the place!
Hop shoots
Hops climbing over the hedge
…and Hampshire’s Secret Garden…and, no, I didn’t get to see what was beyond…I can imagine though :)
A bit of a glut of fruit in my garden. I’ve therefore been drying raspberries and currants :) At the bottom are the dried fruit, also bilberries and saskatoons!
The red variety is a tasty disease resistent variety we found escaped from the old Malvik railway station garden below the house. There are two yellow varieties, one just received as gulbringebær (yellow raspberry), the lighter coloured one that is almost white when unripe is called “White Russian” The red variety is a tasty disease resistent variety we found escaped from the old Malvik railway station garden below the house. There are two yellow varieties, one just received as gulbringebær (yellow raspberry), the lighter coloured one that is almost white when unripe is called “White Russian”
Redcurrants / rips Redcurrants / rips
Dried bilberries / blåbær
Dried saskatoon berries (Amelanchier) / søtmispel
Dried red raspberries / bringebær
Dried redcurrants /rips
Dried yellow raspberries….White Russian are the lighter coloured berries
Perennial vegetables, Edimentals (plants that are edible and ornamental) and other goings on in The Edible Garden
:) This problem wasn’t restricted to England but also famous wine growing areas in France: http://www.cnbc.com/2017/
;)
