I found a big box of frozen Mulberries in our freezer yesterday. I gave a couple to the children as a chilly treat and then remembered that we had recently consumed the last of our super tasty Mulberry gin during the Winter nights. It was clearly time to create some fresh supplies.
My brother had given me a bottle of gin for Xmas and I was going to save it until the Summer months, but this seemed a project worthy of breaking that pledge. The decorative bottle that we had dispatched over Christmas was undoubtedly cute, but actually quite small, or so it seemed once we got a taste of it.
I filled too jars with the fruit and steeped it in gin; it soon took on a glowing ruby red hue. Normally when making liquors, I add a bit of sugar to help the process but Mulberries are so sweet, it did not seem necessary. I will test it in due course, just to be sure...
Spring seems to be arriving a full month early here in the UK. Plum blossom is blooming all over the place, snowdrops daffodils and crocuses are all flowering at the same time bringing a cheery flourish to the gloomy weather we have been experiencing.
Does this mean the Plums will be ripening a month early? Will they fruit before the Cherries? Perhaps February or March will turn dramatically colder and ruin the early harvest. Who knows? All we can do is wait and observe the changes as they occur. I remember a bad year for Cherries that I put down to high winds during the blossom season deterring pollinators.
Meanwhile, we can simply enjoy the florid display, allow it to lift our hearts and hope that it heralds a good Spring, warm Summer and prolific Autumn.
When the Summer sun is shining, there’s nowhere better to be than deep in the UK countryside, and we were lucky to have a fantastic fortnight in Devon. After returning from our holiday we knew we had to get back up to our allotment, to see how the weeds were growing.
We were a tad concerned that no one had been available to water our vegetable plot during all that scorching hot weather. However, on arriving, we found to our delight, a burgeoning crop of Super veg; well we thought it was super (not too bad for our first year) but it wouldn't win any agricultural show prizes.
We rummaged through the undergrowth and found Squashes, Runner beans, Cucumbers, Potatoes, Beetroot, Onions and Courgettes, some of which had turned into massive Marrows. The fruit cage had a few raspberries available and there were masses of blackberries all over the place, not that we had propagated these.
One of the huge marrows was finally transformed by the Head Chef into six jars or scrummy Chilli and Courgette Chutney.
I also used the Raspberries and a couple of stray Blueberries to make another bottle of summer fruit liquor, which will be ready later on. So far I have tried Cherry Brandy, Sloe Gin, Mulberry Gin, Blackberry Vodka and Summer Fruit liquor. I’m not sure which will be my favourite but it should be good fun finding out…
