2020 an Interesting Year

It has so far been a year like no other but I'm glad to say that some things have remained constant.

We had an unseasonably hot spring which, along with my nettle beer, helped me through lockdown. Fruit-wise, the warm spring gave us a great crop of soft fruits, from which, my daughter created some truly spectacular deserts to cheer us all up.

The summer period contiued to be hot and dry for long periods and this seems to have hampered some fruit trees due to lack or water. Many apple trees had ripe fruit a month or two before they would normally.

As part of our frequent walks, we got out to gather Mulberries and make yet more delicious things, I have added some more recently to my cider - I successfully did this last year, as an experiment, to great effect.

I also gathered enough Elderberries to make a gallon of port/wine, so perhaps I will be able to test its alleged antiviral properties, in a highly un scientific manner.

At the moment, it looks like our normal, public Apple Day event at Mansbridge Community Orchard, will not be able to proceed due to government restrictions on gatherings but we been doing plenty of pressing, with Apples and Pears, at home in our garden.

Of course, more fruit means better cakes, provided you have some great cooks in the house. If you don't have great cooks, you can always learn some new skills yourself. In difficult times, it is important to adapt; change is normal, be agile, be creative, keep fit & healthy, build resilliance into your bodies and family systems...

Mulberry Tinted Cider

The first batch of this year's cider is being bottled. This time, as an experiment I added some Mulberries and Blackberries to a couple of gallons. I'm happy to report that he result was a resounding success; the drink not only tastes superb, the fruit sugars have taken the edge off the sharpness and added subtle flavours. Also, as a bonus, it also looks rather splendid too!

Fruitopia

The sizzling Summer in the UK has parched parks and over-mown lawns to a hay-like shade of beige. We have been struggling to prevent our allotment turning into a dessert. If we had more time, this would not be a problem, but we often find it difficult to visit more than once per week.

Our Blackberries are finally ripening along with summer Raspberries, Loganberries, Blueberries and Blackcurrants (yuk!) and they are abundant. 

Picking Blackberries this year is going to be so easy and unsurprisingly, a lot of fruit seems to be arriving early. Even Hazelnuts seem to be arriving sooner than they normally would and they seem to be very plentiful too.

This weekend we got on our bikes and visited our favourite Mulberry tree, which we would not normally expect to be ready yet, but sure enough, we found many sweet, juicy, red/black fruits awaiting us. 

That evening the children made the most delicious fruit salad, with Mellon, Raspberries, Strawberries, Mulberries and Blackberries (Topped off with vanilla Ice cream) just perfect for a sweltering hot summer evening.

Caught Red Handed!

The Red Hand Gang

Blackberries are out everywhere now in the UK and our kids have been munching them by the handful when and wherever they spot them. We also made some rather tasty Blackberry Muffins.

Beautiful Blackberries

However, our favourites, for this time of year, are the more difficult to find, Mulberries. Many people have never even had the pleasure of tasting a Mulberry and people often ask us what we are picking when we go out hunting for them.

Marvellous Mulberries

Apparently the trees were introduced into the UK by King James, in an effort to break the grip that China had on the silk trade (silk worms eat the leaves of the White Mulberry tree) but something got lost in translation and so hundreds of Black and Red Mulberry trees were imported and planted in estates and gardens all over England. This was unfortunate for King James and the hungry silkworms but very lucky for us!

It can be difficult to harvest these juicy berries without getting coated in the sweet syrupy juice but walking home, looking as if you may have recently committed murder, is all part of the fun really.

You do need to be careful not to get the juice on your clothes and your footwear will inevitably clogged with crushed fallen fruit, so you need to be cautious on arriving home.

Picking Mulberries in a Southampton Park

A large proportion of what we pick gets eaten straight off the tree but I do manage to bring some home for baking and other experimental processes. This year my daughter helped to create a Mulberry Clafoutis (basically a giant oven-baked pancake), which made an exotic and very tasty seasonal pudding.

Mulberry Clafoutis 

I always like to steep a jar of Mulberries in gin and this produces an irresistible and very attractive ruby red liquor - the only trouble with this drink being that it tastes almost too good.

Quick, call security, someone is stealing the University's Mulberries!

Early Spring? Make Mulberry Gin!

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.

More Magical Mulberries

I revisited our old favourite Mulberry tree while it was still fruiting, with a friend. We used different methods to pick the tasty succulent berries. Initially we just reached up and gathered what we could from ground level, but as normal we could see larger darker fruit, annoyingly just out of reach.

So we spread out an old sheet over the ground and then gave the thinner branches a good shake. This method was fairly useful, if somewhat indiscriminate and the Mulberries were easy to spot as they fell.

It was a very enjoyable time and out containers were quickly filled to the brim and beyond. Obviously we had to eat some before we could gently squeeze the lids on. Then we cycled off contented and coated in sweet sticky juice.

When I got home, I decided to freeze my delicious hoard and decide how to use them later. I laid them out on baking trays before slotting them into the freezer, then bagged them up later. This means you can choose exactly how many you want to use at any time later on.

Hopkins made a smashing smoothie with some of her Mulberries - the recipe follows...

• 1 frozen banana 
• 1 Handful of mulberries
• 2 cm fresh ginger (grated)
• 1 cup rice milk (or any other milk) 

BLEND...

CONSUME!

Blackberries are particularly abundant at the moment and Hazel nuts will soon be dropping too. We made our first Bramble and Apple crumble of the year - hopefully there will be many more to come.

Dial M for Mulberry

The morning was muggy, or was it Tuesday? I get confused...

The slim blonde dame in blue hat was staring at me through her fingers. She looked like she might be hiding something - her hands were dripping with a sticky red claret-like liquid. 

It looked like it should be a clear cut case.

Then I noticed that the girl had an accomplice, loitering nearby. He was a small chap who looked like he had not eaten for a week. He was sporting a blue hat too but I was not sure if that was significant. Their getaway vehicles were well oiled and between the two of them they looked guilty as sin.

Someone whispered the word Mulberry but what did that mean? Could it be some kind of code or a clue?

Later that night I asked Uncle Google if he knew anything about Mr Mulberry. 

He related mysterious tales about silk worms, the orient and trees that bleed. A distant memory about the unlucky kimono flashed through my mind. However, after mulling it over, I was convinced this was just a red herring. 

I seemed to be going round and round...

Then I remembered a post I once saw about a sticky sweet juicy fruit - somewhere halfway between a Raspberry and a Blackberry that grows on a tree called the Mulberry.

Apparently, these two suspicious characters had located all the Southampton Mulberry trees on a secret map and then raided them on stealth-bikes. By the time you read this, their blue hats and juice smeared faces will have vanished into the ether. 

Mulberry Madness

All Smiles at the Allotment

Mulberries are a gorgeously tasty sweet fruit and once you locate a tree, you will want to keep an eye on it and visit it regularly. The fruits sweeten as they darken and they will not all be ripe at the same time. 

Under the Mulberry Umbrella

Of course the darkest sweetest fruits, are also the softest and the blood red juice can tend to get everywhere and stain things, like fingers.

Guilty as Charged

We visited a favourite tree when on holiday in Devon. Then on our return to Sunny Southampton we picked a load off a local tree.  Before we entered the house again we checked the soles of our shoes (fortunately) and had to spend a while brushing the sticky berries off them, that could have made a dreadfully messy mess.

Come Back Next Week

The children they looked up a recipe for Blackberry and Apple Crumble, my favourite; we already had a load of Blackberries from the allotment. They used a mixture of Blackberries and Mulberries, along with some apples that we had picked earlier.

Tastes Better than it Looks!

I failed to take photos of the children cooking (probably a good thing in retrospect) but they actually did a fantastic job, rest assured the result was a feast for the taste buds. By the time did I remember the camera, there was barely anything left!

Winter Warmers

Happy New Year Readers.

Lighting Over the Itchen River

The weather here has been relentless and unforgiving; we did manage to enjoy the storms in Devon after Xmas but beyond this we have been largely confined to quarters.

A Huge Beech Tree - Blown Down on Cheesefoot Head

After bottling up another batch of Elderberry Port, and with Sloe and Medlar wine currently on the go, I took the opportunity to test some of the adult drinks we had created this year.

Storm Waves in Hope Cove

Here then, is a quick round up of the fruity flavours that I have experimented with over the last year.

Elderberry Port, Medlar & Sloe Wine, Cider

•       Elderflower Champagne. It took two attempts and some exciting explosions but we had great results in the end. Lessons learned for next Spring/Summer. Plenty of Elderflower Cordial to keep the kids happy throughout the year.
•       Mulberry Gin. Definitely dangerously delicious! I had to fight the children for the Mulberries.
•       Blackberry Vodka. What’s not to like?
•       Raspberry Vodka. A nice contrasting compliment to the other fruit liquors .
•       Cherry Brandy. I think this still needs some tweaking or perhaps I just don’t like it very much.
•       Cider. 11 Gallons this Autumn and it tastes much nicer than last year. We will be made some Mulled Cider and mince pies for Christmas parties. Lots of Apple Juice for the children too; I think pasteurisation may be called for next time.
•       Medlar Wine.  Currently bubbling away nicely, last year’s batch is not bad at all.

  

  Medlar Wine 2012 Vintage

•       Elderberry Port. Recently bottled, very successful in previous years.
•       Sloe wine, still busy fermenting in the demi-jon.
•       Sloe Gin, a plummy favourite that makes a popular gift. Also a great nip for those cold winter nights.