February Foragings

 

I had promised myself I would be doing plenty with my usual foraging fare this year.  Three times I made it around the farm picking plums, blackberries and elderberries before the rain hit.  The first two times, I was able to wash, weigh and bag the berries and put them in the fridge to wait for a bigger volume.  After I'd made eight jars of plum jam. The third time I had to throw it all away, I had just started to take the elderberries off the stalks when I got the news about my friend and wasn’t able to come back to them for over a week. 

 

Last weekend, I went for a big forage, hoping that I hadn’t missed too much.  Because of all the rain, the creek is still running, which is pretty much unheard of in February.  So I went out with Hubby’s waders on.  I wasn’t wearing a belt to hook the side straps up to, but I thought since they reached mid-thigh, I should be right.

 

The blackberry pick was impressive.  In two hours, splashing through the creek to reach them, I picked nearly 3kg.  I only stopped when I misjudged a deep part of the creek and filled up one wader.

 

I’d already filled a bucket with elderberries from three young trees that have turned up on the fence line.  There are more berries than leaves on two of them, and the majority are still not quite ripe.

 

I spent a morning sorting, washing and stripping the berries. 3kg of blackberries has turned into something partway between jam and jelly.  I used a jam recipe but ran it through the mouli to remove all the seeds. It’s not set as well as I would like, but it’s set enough and there are 10 jars of blackberry jam in the pantry.

 

I spent a day adapting a horehound candy recipe to make elderberry lozenges.  They haven’t quite set as well as I’d like, but I wrapped them and keep them in the fridge so they’ll do.

 

I’ve started a batch of elderberry wine, with whatever blackberries I had leftover in too.  I have been making elderberry wine for eleven years now, I’m sure this is the first one that started bubbling almost as soon as I put the bubbler into the barrel.

 

All the summer rain has made the mushrooms grow well.  Not that I can find them easily.  After the last few years of drought, I made the decision that we had too many animals and the paddocks needed some resting.  I’m now down to two cows (from five last year) and ten adult sheep (it was more than twenty). With all the rain, the paddocks I’m resting are growing like I’ve never seen before.  I almost have too much feed.  It's more good luck than anything else spotting field mushrooms in knee-high grass.

 

However, the stocks of frozen fried mushrooms are being replenished.

 

So while it feels like the rest of the world has gone mad with a pandemic, protests and potential war in Europe, I feel like my little corner of the world is doing ok.