Apples, Pears, Grapes & Walnuts

It has been a very wet and very busy October. We have processed about 300kgs of apples. I needed a faster way to chop them on my own and a stainless steel Spear & Jackson did the job perfectly!

Gallons and gallons of delicious juice has been produced, some has been Pasteurised for later, some has been turning into cider and lots has been glugged back straight from the press by keen, thirsty workers.

Apple Day at Mansbridge Community Orchard was delayed by stormy weather but we delivered the following week and a gang of curious local kids and adults came out to help, which is what it is all about. We had wheelbarrows full of apples, boxes of pears and even had a bucket load of grapes to press.

The grapes produced a gallon of juice, which is now fermenting into red wine along with my cider and various other alchemical concoctions. We have also been collecting lots of Walnuts, to go with our Hazelnuts; there is a huge tree in Mansbridge, near the orchard. It has delivered a fantastic crop this year, most of which is lying on the green waiting to be gathered or gobbled by hungry squirrels.

My Apple Store is now completely filled to bursting and this should keep us in fruit through the winter, with a little luck. Unblemished Apples will keep for many months if stored in a cool dark place. They should not be left touching each other, so that if one goes bad, it will not affect the others and can be easily removed.

Cherry Plum Wine

4lb. Plums

10cm Root Ginger

4 Cloves

1 lemon sliced

1 Gallon water

3lb. Sugar

Yeast

I used the cherry plums that I had previously frozen – there just happened to be approximately the right amount. I’m pretty confident that wine making, like cookery, is not an exact science, despite what some celebrity chefs would have us believe and this makes it much more exciting. If the plums have been previously frozen, this also helps to break down the fruit and release the juice. If you are using fresh fruit you will need to cut and stone the plums before continuing.

Now I Feel a Lot Better...

Bash the ginger with a rolling pin to release the flavour (and any residual stress left over from your day at work), add it to the plums with the cloves and sliced lemon. Boil the water, pour it over the mixture and stir. The boiling water will kill off any stress, which is now contained in the mixture; you can relax now and soak up the fantastic aroma.

A Lovely Smell and Colour

Cover loosely and leave for two or three days, stirring twice daily with a wooden spoon. I also added a teaspoon of Pectinase at this point, to help reduce cloudiness later. Strain the mixture through a jelly bag (a couple of layers of muslin or an old tea towel will do equally well), do not squeeze – be patient and allow it to drip.

And Wait...

Stir in the sugar until it is all dissolved and when the liquid is lukewarm add the (previously activated) yeast. Pour into a fermentation jar and insert an air lock. Then leave it to ferment to finish in a warm place.

Syphon off into bottles or a storage jar and cork.

Country wines will improve over time (apparently), although they can taste drinkable fairly soon after bottling. Even if your wine tastes great at first, it can be worth asking your beverage butler to set a few well labelled bottles aside in the wine cellar (kitchen cupboard/box-under-the-stairs/outhouse/shed etc.).

Cherry Plum Yum Yum Yum

A Real Plum Spot

Miraculously, just as the cherry trees were starting to look a little empty – I spotted a Cherry Plum tree that was laden with ripening fruit. I tried a couple, then quickly filled my empty sandwich box and headed back.

My First Cherry Plums of 2011

These beautiful little fruits are always simple to spot because people do not often bother to crop them at all, hence you tend to notice the fruity mess, squashed all over the pavement.

Squashed Messy Fruit - Look Up!

Cherry plums come in many colours and will differ likewise in taste but they will all cook nicely. I have seen Red, Yellow Purple and Green varieties, all of which taste great straight off the tree. It is easy to tell when they are ready for harvesting, as they will be falling of their own accord and should come off into your hand just by touching.

Many Colours but all Plums

Closely related fruits are the Greengage, Damson, Bullace and Wild Plum. Again, they vary greatly in size, taste and colour but all can be eaten or cooked.

The Usual Suspects

It’s worth remembering (especially if you have young children) that the pavement is not always the best place to pick from, especially if it is beside a busy road. Fortunately, there is often a field on the other side of the hedge, so this is where your young pickers should be installed.

Green Plums - Possibly Bullace

These tasty hedgerow fruits can be eaten straight of the tree or made into Pies, Jam, Chutney, Cordial, Schnapps, Wine and a hundred other lovely things. Most recipes that I know do not include the stones, so you might as well take them out as soon as you get home, if you intend to cook with them.

Red Cherry Plums

You can then freeze the halves in the same way as I described for cherries. Of course, they will keep on the windowsill (as they are) for a while, if you just want to eat them as the fancy takes you.

Pitted and Ready to Freeze

It might be worth experimenting a little with drying these fruits – home made prunes anyone? Actually these things often taste a lot nicer than they sound.

Another Loaded Tree Waiting to be Turned into Chutney, Jam or Pies

I think it may be about time to get the child supported blanket out again and shake a tree or two this weekend.

Summer Plum Recipes

Cherry Red

During my lunchtime wander two weeks ago, I spotted RED CHERRIES in the nearby trees. Not all of the trees, and not a lot in those where I did find them, but they are definitely on the way.

Nearly Ripe Cherries in a Local Tree

What this means, is that from this time it is a straight race between us foragers and those feathered fiends our feathered friends, who are also partial to a juicy cherry or two. Of course, every cherry eaten by a bird may grow into a new tree elswhere, which is probably why there are so many of them.



The First Cherry of the Season is Always Special (and probably not quite ripe too).



The trick is to keep a close eye on your chosen trees and not pick them too early, wait until most of the fruit is ready (red or black depending on the type)  - then pick them quickly, before the birds realise what’s going on (maybe distract them with a worm or something).



Cherry Picking



We spent the half-term in Devon and on our return we scoped out the local trees. One small tree by the railway looked ripe. The cherries were large and they tasted good – so we grabbed as many as we could.

Life is Like a Bowl of Cherries - Apparently

YUMMY! Sorry, there's none left. We are hopefully picking again next Sunday though.

National Cherry Day is on Sat July 16^th apparently (although this seems a tad late in my experience). According to Cherry Aid, in the last 50 years we’ve lost 90% of our Cherry orchards and now import around 95% of the Cherries we eat. A couple of weeks ago I bought a reduced punnet of Cherries for £2.00, but I won’t be buying any for the next month, not while the wild trees are bursting with juicy goodness.




Ripe Cherries - Yum, Yum, Yum!

 

You can cook them, freeze them, boil them, preserve them, dry them, turn them into wine, probably even pickle them or even just eat them straight off the tree. The good thing about all these options, is that the sour/bitter tasting fruits are better for cooking and of course the sweet delicious ones are best for simply scoffing!

Assorted Cherry Recipes can be found here...

Click on the recipe name and the detals should appear below.

Wasp Wars & Purple Wine Explosions

One of my earliest attempts at creating foragers wine involved wild damsons, and they turned out to be very wild indeed.

As young lads, we often used to play in the local woods, which involved a quick trip across the local railway branch line, fording the Monks Brook, walking through a cow field and hopping over a style - there was our place of boyhood adventure. There we built dens and tree houses, frightened pheasants with home-made spears, caught lizards, slow worms and grass snakes (we all now know that you should never do this) and fought wars with crab-apples and catapults.

A Lovely Grass Snake

Late one spring, we discovered the foundation ruins of a small building, we called it the Gravediggers cottage; it was probably just a couple of bricks left on the ground.  Next to it we found a damson tree bearing unripe fruit. We planned all kinds of ways to use this purple hoard once it had ripened; including, giving them to mum to make stuff out of, and inevitably… Damson wine of our own recipe.

As spring crept toward summer and we watched for signs of ripe fruit dropping, other, uninvited guests came to join the party, WASPS! The stripy blighters had deliberately built an underground nest, right beneath our tree.  To make matters worse, they were eating OUR damsons. 

Yellow Jackets at Four 'O' Clock!
 That's OK, we've got 2 hours then.

Despite the striped no-fly-exclusion-zone the insects established around OUR tree! The next day we declared war and visited teenage shock and awe upon the wasps, I think we all got stung at least once but we did manage to liberate our tree in the end.
The Damson wine did eventually get made and it cleared to a beautiful pinkish-purple hue, somewhat akin to methylated spirits. Fortunately, it tasted better than meths. I admit that it may have tasted sweeter due to our recent victory but it was sparkling too, fizzing with Champagne like bubbles. If only we had had the foresight to store it in Champagne bottles…

Looks Explosive...

Luckily for all concerned the explosion occurred at night; glass shards embedded themselves in the plaster of the dining room walls and ceiling, and the mess was very messy. You live and hopefully, you learn from your mistakes but my interest in wine making did not stop with damsons; I went on to make others including ginger, elderberry, rice and even water wine. The latter was purely to satisfy my curiosity and personal messianic complex, using only tap water, sugar, and yeast. Needless to say, it tasted quite vile and I never did manage that other thing with the loaves and fishes either.

I should point out that this terrible tale of anarchy, chaos and destruction occurred about 35 years ago, I am now older and wiser. We know, for instance, that wasps play an equally important part in the role of ecology as butterflies and we should not attack or kill them (even to protect a fruity purple hoard).

Summer Fruit Liqueur - Beware!

Now, back to the future and last year I made green walnut schnapps, which now tastes lovely despite looking like used engine oil. I also made a summer fruit liqueur, employing vodka, raspberries, blackberries and other foraged things - it is a beautiful red colour and is dangerously delicious...







Spring Forward - Fall Back on Planning

This year (2011) I intend to make Elderflower cordial for the kids and Elderflower champagne for my wife and myself, although I suspect that the EU will insist that we call it fizzy wine. I also aim to make elderberry and plum or damson wine, I will eat plums if I have to but I feel sure that there are better things to do with them.

Hard to believe it, but this is quite simply the best apple tree

 Chutney uses plums apparently, so I might try that, and chutney seems to last forever as far as I can tell. Plum jam could work too, I'm sure. There are so many trees in the hedgerows and they ought be utilised somehow. I guess all this planning means we will need to start saving up and preparing some suitable bottles and jars, so I’d better start drinking some wine!

Beautiful Springtime - Plum blossom bursts forth first heralding the new season

I am loosely planning to have a stall at the school summer fete, but I need to get organised and find out what date it is held. The children and I can pick fruit, process it in some appropriate way and then sell it at the fete. We could also sell freshly picked fruit if the timing was right. I imagine a stall brimming with chutney, jam, pies, and fresh fruit like plums and cherries all picked processed and sold by children… We could use some of the proceeds to give to the school and the rest to buy new picking/pickling equipment or to pay for website upkeep.

The first cherry blossom I spotted this year

Through the winter months I have been spotting tree types by their shape and bark and logging the trees positions on my map.

A frozen shower of catkins on a Hazel tree

 Now that March is nearly over, Spring has fully arrived and I have been able to detect trees by their blossoms as they arrive. This is proving a very useful method because Plum comes first, followed closely by the Cherry and later Apple and Pear, giving you a chance to focus in on each type as it arrives.

Cherry tree bark - easily identified when you know what to look for

Catkins are also a type of flower and even through February you can spot Hazel stands by observing them. They always look to me like tiny isolated rain showers, frozen into the hedgerows. The straight stands of hazel sticks and branches become fairly easy to distinguish soon too.