Hello again

I really wish I had the time to blog all the things that run through my brain constantly but somehow work has taken over all living hours.

Anyway on the weekend I managed to get in some fruit picking with QT1.   We are lucky to live in an old farm estate and the vestiges of the old orchard (in fact a huge amount of it) together with many wild fruit trees remain in situ and going strong.  So we now have oodles of sloes to make excellent sloe gin (makes great Christmas presents in little presentation bottles with a ribbon round the neck) although beware of people with allergies as the recipe I use includes ground almonds (recipe later).  You can make it without the almonds but it still tastes slightly almondy so I wouldn’t recommend it if you aren’t sure.

We also got a reasonable amount of blackberries although it was clear that someone had been there before us.  Which brings me to my gripe from last year.  A lady up the road from us (with whom I went to school actually) picked the entire neighbourhood supply of sloes (that’s a major task I can tell you) and then flipping well offered them for sale on Facebook at a rather extortionate price.  Considering they are the “fruit of the field” I thought that was a shocker.  She then advertised how many bottles of sloe gin she had managed to make but she didn’t sell those!

Obviously she didn’t need any more because she clearly hasn’t been collecting this year,  there is such a good crop down the lane at the back of us every neighbour could make sloe gin for an army.

Anyway we now have a freezer full of sloes,  some blackberries,  some blackcurrants (from our garden) some pumpkin (from last year Halloween,  not sure what that will be like!) and a load of apples still (cookers scrumped from the trees in the pub up the road,  that is the old farmhouse and also has the remains of an orchard).

Good to go for the winter maybe.

Incidentally I was born and brought up in this area and as a very young child we used to come and walk through the farm with our grandparents looking at sheep and cows,  lambs and pigs and so on.  There is still a bit of a walk out the back but of course it is rapidly being built on.  Progress marches on sadly.