Wild Weather

There was a wind warning for Tuesday night.  Expect gale force winds of up to 140km per hour.  Make sure that everything outside is secured.

We walked around to check everything.  The new partially finished roof on the farrowing shed was secured by cargo strops.  The outdoor furniture was folded up and moved to somewhere fairly secure.  The rubbish pile behind the shed - bits of wire, pallets waiting to be cut for firewood, random bits of crap that we’ve picked up from all around the place, the window we took out of a bedroom - was looked over, but there wasn’t a great deal we could do with it.

We looked at the empty 30 000 litre water tank that we’re planning to use for rainwater and irrigation.  This has flown before.  It used to reside behind the big shed, but we moved it so that we could start to set it up.  It was on it’s edge in our woodlot and we’d been trying to figure out just how we’d roll it onto it’s flat side and move it to exactly where we wanted it.  One morning we got up to find it up a slight hill and halfway over a fence.  There had been a small tornado hit a town nearby, so I wondered if we’d had a taste of it here too.  This time though, the tank was wedged between two Macrocarpa trees and blocked by a fence.  We couldn’t see it moving anywhere easily so judged it safe to leave as it was.

We thought we’d done as much as we were able and went inside to have our dinner.  The wind was picking up speed and strength.

There was an odd noise an hour or so later.  A rumble that came from the wrong side of the house to where the wind was coming from.  Looking out the window showed nothing obvious.  Maybe, we thought, it was just the wind ripping across the tunnelhouse covers or the tarpaulin on the dog kennel.

Hubby remembered the trampoline.  A large 14’ round one.  We rushed outside to dismantle it.  That was terrifying.  I stood on one of the feet to be ballast while Hubby pulled the springs out.  Once he was about halfway round, the wind did the rest.  I held onto the mat which was now flapping like a sail and threatened to take me flying with it, but I did manage to fold it safely, if roughly. 

Hubby couldn’t settle at this stage.  He turned the electric fence off as he could see the sparks and arcs from it - it had taken some damage and was obviously in contact with something it shouldn’t be.  But as there were a lot of sparks from all sorts of random places, fixing it was a job for daylight and no wind.  He kept prowling around the sheds and the outside of the house, checking and double checking that all was as secure as it could be.  I started to walk down into the wind, to the farrowing shed to check the corrugated iron roof, but quickly realised that if a branch broke off or the tin came loose I wouldn’t see it in time or have any chance to get out of the way.  Instead, I shone my little torch in that direction.

This is where the water tank used to be.

It took me a couple of seconds to realise that I had an unhindered view of the shed.  “Where’s the water tank?” I asked.  Hubby came running.  “That’ll be what that noise was”.  We walked all around our house and the immediate vicinity, there was no sign of it.  I looked along the road, as far as my little torch could shine, nothing.

As we walked back to the house, I noticed that the house had gone dark.  Power was off.  Not surprising really.  It came back on and then went off again just as quickly.  At that point we turned the mains off.  I’ve had a washing machine die recently from a power spike and had no intention of letting that happen to any other appliances.

After that, there didn’t seem to be much we could do.  The kids were already in bed.  In the complete darkness of an unpowered house in the countryside with the wind roaring all around us, we went to bed and tried to sleep.  The darkness was split by a sudden bright flash.  Now we were getting lightning too.  I couldn’t understand this as the sky had been clear.  I got up to get a drink of water and looked out of the kitchen window towards Mt Grey.  There were some clouds over the mountain, which were brightened suddenly by more lightning.  Ah, so that was were it was.  I could see an orange glow, coming and going to the south of us, near the mountain.  It looked like a light from a small plane or helicopter, but there was no way they’d be flying in this weather.  From the worried texts I’d received from my family in Christchurch, reports said we were getting winds of 200km/h.  I shrugged it off and went back to bed.

I didn’t sleep very well though, as much as I tried.  I’d be almost asleep and there would be another blinding flash of lightning, a crash or the whole north side of the house would creak and flex and I’d start worrying about the windows blowing in, or a rogue branch breaking off and hitting a window.  I must have slept at some stage.  I recall waking up to silence during the night and realising that the wind must have settled down or stopped.

I was woken up by a text message on my phone.  It was 7:30am and Miss Seven’s school sent a text to say they had power and water and would open as normal, but the buses would be running slowly because of the roads.  We got up and woke the kids.  Hubby got his camp fuel burner out to make us a cuppa.  It hadn’t been used in several years and we soon found that it leaked when he nearly set the whole kitchen alight.  It took all day to get rid of the smell of the fuelite gas.  We started the coal range and put a pot of water on to boil.

Our special tree before.

Our tree taken from the same place.

We had a brief look around outside to survey the damage.  Hubby was anxious to find the water tank, I was worried that the water tank had caused damage to fences perhaps letting someone’s stock out or had taken out power lines or was maybe blocking a road.  One side of the Chook run was down, so this needed fixing before the dog was allowed to run - he’s already killed one hen who was a determined escape artist. 

Our tree again.

Then we saw the tree.  This tree has always been special for us.  Not only is there something magical about the tree itself, but last November we were married under it.  We loved that tree and are much saddened by it’s loss.  Okay, compared to many around us, it’s a pretty minor thing and we were lucky, but it was important to us.

I rang a neighbour on their mobile to make sure they were okay.  I’d taken her to the Doctor’s last week and I knew she was very sick.  They were fine, he’d dug out the old transistor radio and they were listening to the news.  There was a huge forest fire west of Amberley - which is about where we are - could I see anything?  I thought it might have been on the other side of the mountain.  We could see no smoke, but had been hearing helicopters on and off.

We took Miss Seven to school.  By the time she was up and organised it was nearly time for school to start.  Master Fifteen got ready for school (which is an achievement in itself) and we were going to drive him to his school in Rangiora.  On our little road, which sees hardly any traffic, we were stopped by a neighbour who was driving around checking up on people.  We mentioned the water tank, and they knew where it was.  Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere.  Then another neighbour drove up and asked if we were all okay, did we need anything?  The neighbourly spirit in rural areas really is heartwarming.  Master Fifteen, with all his teenage cynicism thought it was a clever and polite way of being nosy and checking out how much damage everyone else had, but I pointed out to him that emergency services are further away for us, we help each other out because we hope that someone will be there for us when we need it.

The water tank now, at the neighbours.

After dropping Miss Seven off at school, Master Fifteen received a text message to tell him that his school was closed.  We went up the road past ours, up the next valley to check on friends who lived up there.  We could only go about halfway.  The road was closed by a fire crew and a helicopter was just taking off from the paddock beside the road.

Trees were down everywhere.  Carnage is the only way to describe it.  We live in a high wind area at the best of times, so there are a lot of tall hedges and shelter belts.  They were a mess.  Splintered, snapped branches jutted out from nearly every hedgerow.  Branches littered the sides of the roads, in places you could see that they’d already been cut into manageable lengths and pulled off the road.  Entire trees, trunks a metre thick were pulled up and lying down in paddocks.  Massive clumps of dirt still tangled in their roots and gaping holes showed where they had once stood.  Road signs were snapped off at the base and a local sign with steel tube legs had turned 90 degrees - one leg has obviously broken.

Steel legged road sign - turned 90 degrees.

I sent a text message to the friends we couldn’t reach.  They were in the UK, but their neighbour had been evacuated because of the fire.  They were feeling a little odd.  Last time they’d gone back to the UK there were the September 2010 earthquakes.  I joked that their sense of timing was incredible, they joked that they obviously can’t leave us to look after the place.

The chook run

We fixed the side of the chook run, a quick and temporary fix, but enough to work for now and had a slightly better look around at the damage.  Fences that we knew were tired and needed work were now flattened.  Fortunately, all the cattle were in other paddocks.  Two windows from the larger unit that we’d taken out of a room had flown about 10 metres and landed unbroken.  I’m really not sure how they managed to fly over a lot of lighter stuff, not to mention all the bricks they must have come in contact with and still not break.

We could see the water tank now, down the creek at the neighbours.  It looks fairly well dented in.  The neighbour was impressed, it had gone over 2 fences and several plum trees to get where it is and there is no noticeable damage to the fences or those trees.  My Dad has schemes for it if it’s no good to hold water anymore.  He thinks it’ll make a good pig house with a little modification.

Hubby went off to work for the afternoon, but sent reports of pink batts and roofing iron on the roads.  The power came back on mid afternoon - in time for Miss Seven to get home from school!

I quite enjoyed having a day with no power.  I got so much done that I probably normally wouldn’t have.  I also came to the conclusion that living rurally requires a certain level of self-sufficiency whether that’s your goal or not.  We lose power at least once a year, usually in a storm.  With the coal range, candles and board games, it’s an annoyance rather than a problem.  We may get a generator now though - we have our first cattle beastie in the big freezer and that would be heart-breaking to lose.

The yellowish clay in the centre of this picture is the dirt clinging to the roots of a mighty fallen tree.

An entire hedge uprooted.

Fresh Eyes

My sister came out to our block for a visit yesterday.

She's become really keen on photography and has some real talent.  Photography was, in fact, one of the reasons she finally made it out for a visit.  My parents were here about a month ago and were consistently in awe of all the fantails and swallows that clowned around near the house.  They raved to her about them and having a thing for photographing birds she got motivated to make it out here.

Unfortunately, most of the birds have gone for the winter.  There is still the odd fantail floating around, but not in the numbers that there were a month or so ago.

We still went for a long walk around the farm.  She got photos of a number of birds, but went into raptures over the creek.  We spent so much time finding the right spot, making sure it was safe to get to - there has been a lot of erosion after the heavy rain and flooding last week - and catching the sunlight sparkling on the running water or the layers of clay and stones up the cliff face.

My sister kept apologising for being a pain in the butt.  I kept telling her she wasn't.  It's nice to have someone who sees what I see.  Hubby would look at most of these photos and see the gorse - he would see work to be done, the amount of paddock that has been lost under the gorse and to the creek and miss the beauty of it.  The first thing I see is how much more land we've lost to erosion - it is a constant worry for me and something I'm working on - but I see the beauty too.  The wild rugged nature of untamed paddocks that were 'let go' sometime in the last 10 - 15 years.

Photo Credit to my talented sister - Tee Marie Photography (c)2013 All Rights Reserved.

Yes our block is a lot of work - we wouldn't have been able to afford one that wasn't a lot of work - and while I know there is a lot we have to do and I'm keen to get stuck into it (apparently you can only do one thing at a time) I also love it just the way it is.  Having my sister's fresh eyes has really made me appreciate that too.

A Box of Grandma's Goodies

My parents have been having a clean out and found a box of stuff from Grandma that has now been passed on to me.

My Grandma passed away nearly 17 years ago now, but I still remember all her craft projects.  Her house was filled with them, we all had and frequently wore jerseys and cardigans knitted by Grandma and I recently found a pillowcase with one of her liquid embroidery pictures half finished on it.

The Knit'n Sew Time Saver

This box of goodies was like Christmas for me.  First there was the box of knitting needles, well, at first glance it was a box full of knitting needles, but further investigation turned up a treasure trove of crafty tools and memories - there were crochet hooks, sewing needles of every type imaginable, a knitting needle gauge, tailors chalk, row counters, stitch holders, a bag filled with safety pins and a "knit and sew time saver" still in it's original paper bag.  I found the pair of hopeless blunt children's scissors that I was sent outside with at the age of three or four and told to trim the edges of the lawn while Grandad had a nap.  There are some of the short knitting needles that I used when Grandma tried ever so patiently to teach me how to knit - again at about the age of three or four.

The next smaller box contained more knitting needles and crochet hooks, in sizes I wouldn't have thought were made.  One pair must be at least 20mm.  There are also several that look like a knitting needle at one end (the end with the knob), but have a crochet hook on the other where there would normally be a point.  I'll find out what they're for I'm sure, they seem a bit unwieldy to use as a normal crochet hook.  If anyone does know - please tell me in a comment as it's driving me a little crazy.

Yet another box was more interesting.  All the gadgets you can think of and probably a few you wouldn't have.  Buttons, elastic, vilene, pinking shears, cotton tape, small flowers made of felt and some that you'd expect to find on underwear (actually, I think I used to have some nighties with these on the front), the "Speedy Stitcher" Sewing Awl - a tool for sewing canvas and heavy materials, "safety cutters" - officially for letter openers but also cuts textiles, fabrics, vinyl etc, and a "palm loom" (what ever that is for). 

The rest of the box though is magazines and books.  Craft books, pattern books, crafting magazines, the works.  Some are older than I am but still in fantastic condition!  I'm tempted to have a go at the baskets made with pine needles and raffia, but not so sure on the macrame shoes (even down to making the wooden sole/wedge).

One of the books that I've leafed through has really caught my imagination.  Bright Ideas For The Home by Per Dalsgaard and Elisabeth Erichsen.

This book contains patterns and instructions for making your own furniture - including lounge suites and a four poster bed.  Each design is simple and quite easy and inexpensive to make.  The fabrics used show the era that the book was published in (1978) but fabric choices aside, most of the designs would still look fabulous today.  Those designs that scream 70s could be easily adapted to something more timeless.

There are more that I haven't gotten to yet.  I think I need a rainy day (or week) to explore them all.


 

Updates and Winter Blues

I've really fallen away from my plans to write at least five posts a week for this blog.

There have been a number of reasons for this.  I'm not going to think of them as excuses, because when it comes down to it, I still could have written.

I still have a piglet living in my bath.  She's doing well, but still rather small for all that she's nearly two months old.  I've been taking her outside most days and trying to convince her to nibble on grass instead of just the fallen autumn leaves that she comes across.

It was recommended to me by a pig farmer that I start her on milky porridge to try and get her eating solid food.  In the bath (where I normally feed her) this was an unmitigated disaster.  She doesn't look down and in the space of maybe 20 seconds there was porridge everywhere except inside my piglet.  So I thought I'd try doing this outside.  She saw the side of the bowl as a place to have a scratch and this time it came closer to being inside the piglet, but it was still on the outside (as a rather interesting coating).

I have been caught up in my teenage son's depression and related issues.  This went beyond mopey drama that most of us expect from teens and became rather serious on a number of levels.  Hopefully, we're on the right track now and things will get better from here on.

I'm also rather busy with setting up TimeBank Hurunui.  I've probably been the least active of our committee, but still find that there is plenty for me to do.

I have a calendar that I should have finished months ago (actually, I thought I had finished it late last year) that is due out shortly.  This has led to a last minute panic because this isn't an ordinary calendar, this has a heap of astrological information that I need to calculate and enter into the calendar.  At least our artist is onto it and producing top quality work as always.

I've also been in a bit of a funk.

With all the dramas of the last few months I've found it hard to care about a lot of things.  Some of this may be seasonally affected - I'm very much a sun bunny and shorter colder days tend to do something to me.  Fortunately, I've discovered that we have field mushrooms popping up here and there.  While I don't eat them (I'm allergic) Hubby and Miss Seven love them, so walking through the paddocks looking for mushrooms is a useful activity that inspires me to do more.

On the plus side, we bought a bale of straw.  When Hubby went into the garden centre to get it, it never occurred to me to specify what type of straw - we got barley straw from them last year - so it wasn't until we got it home that I realised we had a massive amount of pea straw.  I'm hoping that it's going to be okay for bedding for pigs and hens but I'm not certain.

The pigs pull any straw I put in their little houses straight back out again and then put it back in when (and how) they want it.  I haven't been back over to their house to see how the pea straw has fared, but the chooks keep emptying their nesting boxes.  I haven't figured out if they're pulling it out because they don't like it or they're scratching it over for all the dried peas.

Which leads to the plus I mentioned.  All the dried peas.  Massive amounts of them.  Just in pulling this bale of straw apart so that I could shift it into the shed (a 2 inch slice at a time) I collected at least 2 kg of dried peas that fell out.  That wasn't even half of what is still in the straw.  I keep asking Hubby where he thinks we should grow peas, he suggested a (tiny) patch of vege garden.  I said that wasn't going to be big enough - pick a paddock.

Where this is a really big plus - the bale of straw cost $65.  We've collected (and some have sprouted under a piglet) at least $25 worth of seed already and as I said earlier, that's not even the half of it.  Growing peas from seed is cheaper than buying peas and we've got so much seed that is an added bonus coming from something else that we did need to buy.

I've also reached a point where I'm making the effort to set aside time for things I always mean to get done but usually don't seem to do.  Friday mornings I bake for the week.  I fill our big biscuit container up to the top (and usually a few left over on the bench) with a variety of bikkies to keep the hungry hordes happy.  Every second week, I make a batch of water crackers too.  I've found a few really simple recipes and the kids love them.  I'll post the recipe soon - it's too good and simple to keep to myself.

I've discovered sock wool.  I'm sure this was around and probably right in my face for a long time, but I only just found it.  Instead of darning holes in socks that I've made, I'm now pulling them apart to the ankle and re-knitting them using sock wool for the heels and toes.  I also went looking for another pattern for socks (which I found).  I wasn't happy with the two that I shared here - the heels just didn't quite work for me in the pattern using circular knitting (nearly every pair wore through to a hole very quickly at the heel) and I couldn't quite figure out how to turn the heel from the two needle pattern into a circular one.  Now I have a pattern that does that and the socks are comfortable too.  I've made everyone in the house two new pairs of socks each and will continue to go through fixing the old ones.

A visit from E-Can and a notice to clear up some of the gorse (but not all of it) led to a flurry of activity that took me away from what I wanted to be doing.

Hopefully, here's to a better couple of months and a bit more blogging.

Piglets

We knew Darla was close to having her piglets.  I worked out the dates from when we saw George on her and came up with Saturday.

Thursday night piglet pile

On Thursday night, Miss Seven came to me and said she thought she'd heard piglet noises coming from their little house while all three pigs were out in the paddock.  I fed the pigs and went and had a look.  She was right.  There was a pile of little piglets in there.  It was nearly dark and hard to see them or count how many there were.

The next morning, we went out to feed the pigs and see if we could see the piglets more clearly.  As Darla got up, she rolled on one of her babies which was heartbreaking, but something I'd been warned about.

Friday morning piglets

My parents came out for a visit that morning.  We went out to see the piglets and I noticed that Darla wasn't in with them and I didn't think she had been all morning.  Two of the piglets seemed very weak, so we rescued them. 

I had seven piglets in a fish crate lined with a woolen blanket and a hot water bottle in there too.  The two weak piglets were very cold, so we wrapped them in towels and cuddled them to try and warm them up.

I left my parents with the piglets while I rushed into town to get some milk powder and a feeding bottle for them.  The vet told me there's a brand that is good for many animals including pigs and to use a lamb bottle.

By the time I got back home, we'd lost the two weak ones and were down to five.  These five didn't seem to be hungry, just cold.  When they did feed, the bottle was too much for them, they weren't up to sucking from a bottle just yet, it required a syringe to drip it into their mouths. 

After four hours, Darla didn't seem to have even noticed that they'd gone.  She showed no signs of looking for her babies, she just carried on with a normal day for her.

Hubby and I were going away for the weekend, a trip we'd had planned for over a month and not one we could cancel easily, but a very good friend was coming out for the weekend to babysit Miss Seven and look after my animals.  We couldn't have picked a better time to be honest.  This friend grew up on a pig farm.  She didn't mind nursing five one day old piglets and had a better idea than I did about how to do it all.

My friend's grandson patting Streaky

We got back on Sunday just after Miss Seven's chosen favourite had died.  They'd lost one other that morning and one more was not looking like he was going to last for long.  The chosen favourite was the only white/pink piglet out of the litter and after watching Charlotte's Web a few times, she wanted a Wilbur.  The problem with Wilbur was that he only walked around in circles.  I'm told it's a sign of fluid on the brain.  Miss Seven was feeding him and he had a seizure quite unexpectedly and then went limp.  My friend realised that he'd gone, but didn't say anything.  After about five minutes, Miss Seven said to her "I think Wilbur has died".  She was really quite philosophical about it and helped her Dad to dig the hole to bury the five piglets we'd lost so far.

That night, the one we didn't really expect to last died too.  He'd had a funny hitch to his breathing and we had to wake him up to make him feed.  This time, we couldn't wake him up, he'd already gone.

So we're down to the last two and they're tough wee fellas (yes, all of the last five were boys and we never checked the sex of the first three we lost).  They're living in my bath (it didn't take long for them to be climbing out of the fish crate for all they're smaller than guinea pigs), lined with woolen furniture moving pads, hot water bottles, towels and with a bar heater going in the room.

Three little piglets, snuggled in the nest in the bath

They're both doing well and have got the hang of the bottles.  My friend gave us one of her grandson's bottles that he didn't need anymore, so Miss Seven and I feed them together.  My bathroom smells like pig and old milk and milky piglet poo, it's okay, last night they slept through the night.  I even refilled and replaced their hot water bottles without them waking up this morning.

Darla doesn't seem to be missing them.  It's a little sad, but I'm glad that I found them when I did.  I know some pigs are just bad mothers and that may be why, although I'm also wondering if she's suffered some brain damage from the seizures she had when Cricket was beating her up.  She was blind for most of a week afterwards.

George has been on her again already.  While we were taking her babies in fact.  I'll see how she goes with another litter and this time, I'll try a farrowing pen, or at least a separate pen for her with a creep rail to keep the piglets safe under a heatlamp.

Autumn Has Come

Our long summer seems to finally have ended.  Most of my harvest is done along with the bulk of the preserving that needed doing with it.

I have sauces, relishes, jams, puree and pastes to last for most of the year ahead.
I have several desserts made and frozen for occasions when I feel like them.
I have cordials and wine for health and enjoyment.
I have enough potatoes to last for many months.
I have winter veges planted, both for our food and for my animals.

Darla is due to have piglets any day now (doing the maths).  She's looking heavily pregnant and her movement is getting slower - well, except at feeding time, she's still the first to meet me when I go out with the pig bucket.

In the next few weeks, the first of my cattle is going to become dinner.  Not the one I'd thought though.  Sirloyne was apparently not castrated in the normal fashion.  He's a short scrotum bull instead of a steer.  Research tells me this makes them infertile and more manageable than a bull, but that they grow more like a bull.  The problem is that he's unruly and I feel unsafe in a paddock with him.  As I do all of my work with them on foot and usually alone, if I don't feel safe, then I can't be in a paddock with him - and I have jumped a fence and walked back to the house along the road while he was running amok all along the fenceline following me.  When the steers get out of their patch (again - too many electric fence issues) he tries to fight with them through a fence.  All still have horns, and I'm starting to worry that they'll damage each other or pull a fence down and then do some serious damage to each other.  So while he's only 14 months old and not really big enough that you'd normally consider calling out the home kill chaps, he's too dangerous for me to keep.

Things I've learned over the last few months

It doesn't pay to make any assumptions.  We learned that a tree that features several times in our garden is in fact quite toxic to the cattle.  It's on the fence line between garden and paddock and all the cattle that have been in that paddock have leaned over the fence and through holes in the windbreak to eat it.  Several developed a cough which has gone since I ran a hotwire along that fenceline preventing them reaching it.

I had assumed that previous owners would have had more clues than I did.  I assumed that since this plant was where it was, then it would have been safe for my animals.  Why would anyone plant a toxic shrub where animals can reach it?  I'm just lucky that I didn't lose any of my cattle to it.  Photinia Red Robin converts to Hydrogen Cyanide and is extremely damaging to ruminants.

Do your preserving straight away.  The sheer volume of blackberries I was picking became overwhelming.  I had days when I was so sick of the sight of them that I wouldn't touch them for a day or two, in which time they started to go mouldy.  I hated giving them to the pigs when I was still pulling their thorns out of my fingertips.

Some friends are worth their weight in gold. I had been worrying a little about winter feed for my animals.  Our hot summer meant that much of the grass died and wasn't growing to the extent that it would last through winter.  A friend called and offered me hay for free - initially it was last years hay that the neighbour was going to dump because his sheep wouldn't eat it, but then it turned into this years hay that had just been cut.  I cannot express my gratitude adequately for the gift of 6 tonnes (8 large round bales) of hay that is currently sitting in my front paddock!

Don't give up on carrots when they appear to have died off.  My carrots growing in the bathtub have had some irrigation issues and it seemed they'd all died.  The leaves had browned off and started to come away.  I was leaving them for the ones in flower to seed and save me buying more.  Then we got rain.  Suddenly, my "dead" carrots have sprung back to life.  They've got new greenery, have lost the bitter taste and are growing bigger again.  The same goes for red onions. which have done it too!

Elderberries

Several Bunches of Elder Berries in Differing Stages of Ripeness

The first time I tried anything with elderberries I was still living in town.  My friend had two trees and a dog who would eat anything, she’d already lost all of her grapes the year before to this dog. But as elderberries are poisonous before they’re cooked, this was potentially a problem. So she was cutting them all and thought of me.  You see, even in town, I was the kind of person who did this kind of thing.

I was given 2 buckets full of elderberries, one 20 litre and one 10 litre.  I had enough elderberries to be doing just about anything I could think of!

I went on the search for an elderberry wine recipe.  I found a few but I wanted one that didn’t contain a million and one additives.  That’s not how I like to do things.  I found one that I liked and started off.

3 lb Elderberries (stripped from stalks)

1 qt boiling water

1 lb raisins or sultanas

3 lb sugar

Juice of 1 lemon

½ oz yeast 

The recipe even stated that it was easiest to strip the berries from the stalks using a fork – awesome, I wouldn’t have thought of that, not straight away anyway. 

I looked at the two buckets of berries, and decided to start with the smaller one.  I tipped it into the sink and covered it with water to wash the berries and started stripping berries from stalks.  6 hours later, I had about half a kilo of ripe berries, but still a sink full of berries and purple water.  Hubby said he’d do some while I went out that night.  I got up the next morning and said to him “I thought you were going to do some?” He had, he’d spent several hours doing it too.  I made the decision then and there that I would get it done that day, I couldn’t have my kitchen sink out of action for another day, and I was sure it wouldn’t be too good for the berries.  I stopped to take my kids to school, and that was about it.  After another 6 hours still working on the same sink full, I realised that the recipe said nothing about only using the ripe berries – I could leave some of the green berries in, and I also realised that the riper berries sunk, the unripe ones floated, and I really didn’t need every last ripe berry.

After that things went far quicker.  I stripped the berries into the sink and used a sieve to scoop the unripe floaters out and discard them, and then to scoop up the ones from the bottom.

I mashed the berries, and started them soaking with the raisins and went to see my local home brew shop.  I didn’t know what yeast I’d need, and also wasn’t sure if I multiplied the yeast as well as the other ingredients – 3 lb from the recipe had become 6 kg of actual berries – more than four times what the recipe called for.  It was also fun doing the conversions into metric, as there was no clue where the recipe had come from and one lb in the UK does not always equal one lb in the US or one lb Imperial.

The owner of the home brew shop gave me the right yeast, all 5g of it, and told me that it would work for up to 23 litres (mine had made up to 20 litres), and also explained the reason many of the modern recipes call for other additives.  The old fashioned recipes are great, if they work for you, but often are inconsistent or taste like crap.

I followed the instructions and had a barrel full of elderberry wine starting.  It needed sugar tomorrow and then another straining a day or two after that, then to be left until it stopped fermenting.

So I made a large batch of elderberry cordial.  That was much easier, stalks and all go into the pot for that.  We found that the number of cloves in the recipe was far too much and that it could use some lemon, but the kids loved it and everyone swore that it killed a cold faster than anything else they’d tried.  The number of cloves in the recipe below is the reduced amount.

The day after we’d added all the sugar to the wine was the devastating February 22nd earthquake.  The brew barrel was sitting on a bar stool in the corner of my kitchen and I lost about 5 litres of the thick syrupy mix all over the floor with broken plates, glasses and the food that had spread itself out of the pantry.  We had no water and no electricity and absolutely no desire to be inside (in case of more aftershocks) to clean it up.  Hubby stood the barrel up, popped the bubbler back in (it had leaked out through the bubbler) and decided to see what happened with it.

It never bubbled again.  After a few months I was talking to a neighbour who was also a keen brewer.  I was thinking about adding more yeast to see if that made a difference - she recommended more sugar instead.  I did that.

The barrel moved with us out to our lifestyle block and I bottled it out here.  I’ve called it Shockwave and there’s a note about earthquake blended on the labels.  It tastes great, but it’s rocket fuel.  A glass or two and I’m almost asleep.

Last year, I missed our elderberries.  I made plenty of cordial with the flowers, but missed the berries altogether.  This year I’ve been keeping a careful eye on them.  I’m not going to make wine, I’ve still got bottles and bottles of that, but I am out of cordial.

Elderberry Cordial

Fill your pan with Elderberries (leave the stalks on) and barely cover with water.  Simmer until fruit is soft.  Strain.  Return liquid to the pan, adding 500g sugar for every 500 mls of liquid and 1 whole clove per litre.  Heat until sugar is dissolved.  Cool and bottle.

In my first batch, I’ve added a whole orange and a whole lemon while the berries were simmering.  We’ll see how that tastes.  Next batch is brewing now.

The cordial is drunk diluted with water.  It’s nice cold, but better with hot water.  Even my teenagers swore by it for colds and flu.  At the first sign of a sniffle or a cough, Miss Sixteen would start drinking hot elderberry cordials and usually it was all gone within a day.  The bonus is that it tastes far better than the more traditional lemon and honey drink.

A Note About Elderberry Toxicity

Apparently there are two main varieties of Elder Tree.  One has poisonous berries when raw and the other doesn’t.  I find it difficult to tell them apart and as there are complete skeletons of cows underneath two of my trees, I think it’s safer to assume that they’re the toxic variety.  In all honesty, if you’re not sure, assume they’re toxic until cooked.

The skeletons have been there for a while, the grass has grown over one of them, I found it as I was standing on something and kicked at it to see what it was and pulled up a couple of vertebrae, then the puppy dug up the skull.  The other is covered mostly in blackberry and gorse.  As such, my cattle don’t go into those paddocks while the trees are in fruit.