- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
I’ve always tried to make an effort to dry a few apples when they’re abundant ‘in country’– sliced up thin and put atop the Aga or the woodburner. And I’ll always stoop to pick up a few hazelnuts when I’m abroad in lower climes. I’ll slice and dry mushrooms, filling a jar for later use. It’s not that I’m so impoverished that I need do this…more it’s the feeling it’s a good thing to preserve some of summers bounty for myself, like the hay I’ve saved for the beasts. In some countries, I know farmers take it further, still making cheeses and salamis and such. It’s all an echo from a former way of living, before freezers, Aldi, and the cash economy.
And this year, the pickings are more abundant than I can ever recall. The beech nuts around the yard have been trodden to a soggy polenta, leaving the spiky husks crunching everywhere underfoot. And while the few apple trees up here haven’t yielded many of their sour little offerings, some trees on some ‘off land’ yielded half a sack full without much effort. The blackberries have been everywhere, persisting later than usual…I was browsing some firmly into November, contrary to the time honoured diktat that they’ve gone to the devil after mid-October. One of the more unlikely and unexpected crops has been what turned out to be a bumper harvest of ‘bullace’. These look like big sloes, and the boy and I stumbled on 3-4 trees heavily laden in a lowland hedge backalong. I’d not noticed them before, and tried one for devilment….as you do. Expecting the face puckering misery of a sloe – and I do occasionally like to remind myself how bad they are- I found these fruits almost edible. Deciding that the Memsahib might make some jam with em or something, we quickly filled –respectively- my cap, and his chainsaw helmet.
Now we’d seen that earnest if chunky TV bushcraft expert making something called Hawthorn leather years ago, and thought we could use the same methodology. And with a bit of experimentation, I found we could be rid of the skins- the tartest bit- and the stones by mashing them up and sieving the resultant gloop. Adding a bit of the aforementioned apple- mushed-, and a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, I’ve taken to drying this stuff on butter paper overnight on the Aga. And the only problem with it is resisting the temptation to eat it just as fast as it is prepared. How it’ll keep is unknown, if a bit irrelevant. In deference to our man Ray, I’ve had a go with Haws too –which are hanging off the thorn bushes up here in quantities unknown. But alone they’re almost tasteless…so we’ve added a bit of apple and sugar which seems to make em a bit more edible.
Alison is moderately concerned that I’ll poison the lot of us, but I notice she has to test each offering too. Oh, and in the interests of probity……DO NOT try this at home. And if you must, don’t blame me when it all goes Pete Tong.
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What it has done is reminded me how far society is divorced from how it feeds itself. All of my efforts hardly stack up to a single trip to the supermarket. There, you can buy almost any foodstuff at any time of year, for almost no money. I had reason to be in a local city last weekend, and visited something called a ‘shopping mall’. And by golly the waddling inhabitants of this strange place must indeed be buying all these foodstuffs- I wager they spend scant time clambering along hedgerows for their sustenance. It’s a different world for me.
Elsewhere, I was idly reading someone waffling on about how we have to move toward ‘zero net carbon emissions’. Now any system that involves burning 300 million year old fossil fuels to provide for an ill-informed urban mass is obviously light years from such plans. And somehow, my own efforts at scratching up a bit of fodder for the house, and then seeing hundreds…..no thousands of people barely aware of where food comes from, but hoovering it up in quantities that are killing them, reminds me….there is no chance. And pretending otherwise is just a childish fallacy.
Hey ho.
And to close, a warning. I’m going to use language I don’t fully understand, but which some of you might. My darling little wife informs me that some important Email communications from the RPA have been disappearing into a ‘spam folder’. Not ours, but one residing with our ‘server’, meaning we never even knew they were missing. Be aware!
And this year, the pickings are more abundant than I can ever recall. The beech nuts around the yard have been trodden to a soggy polenta, leaving the spiky husks crunching everywhere underfoot. And while the few apple trees up here haven’t yielded many of their sour little offerings, some trees on some ‘off land’ yielded half a sack full without much effort. The blackberries have been everywhere, persisting later than usual…I was browsing some firmly into November, contrary to the time honoured diktat that they’ve gone to the devil after mid-October. One of the more unlikely and unexpected crops has been what turned out to be a bumper harvest of ‘bullace’. These look like big sloes, and the boy and I stumbled on 3-4 trees heavily laden in a lowland hedge backalong. I’d not noticed them before, and tried one for devilment….as you do. Expecting the face puckering misery of a sloe – and I do occasionally like to remind myself how bad they are- I found these fruits almost edible. Deciding that the Memsahib might make some jam with em or something, we quickly filled –respectively- my cap, and his chainsaw helmet.
Now we’d seen that earnest if chunky TV bushcraft expert making something called Hawthorn leather years ago, and thought we could use the same methodology. And with a bit of experimentation, I found we could be rid of the skins- the tartest bit- and the stones by mashing them up and sieving the resultant gloop. Adding a bit of the aforementioned apple- mushed-, and a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, I’ve taken to drying this stuff on butter paper overnight on the Aga. And the only problem with it is resisting the temptation to eat it just as fast as it is prepared. How it’ll keep is unknown, if a bit irrelevant. In deference to our man Ray, I’ve had a go with Haws too –which are hanging off the thorn bushes up here in quantities unknown. But alone they’re almost tasteless…so we’ve added a bit of apple and sugar which seems to make em a bit more edible.
Alison is moderately concerned that I’ll poison the lot of us, but I notice she has to test each offering too. Oh, and in the interests of probity……DO NOT try this at home. And if you must, don’t blame me when it all goes Pete Tong.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What it has done is reminded me how far society is divorced from how it feeds itself. All of my efforts hardly stack up to a single trip to the supermarket. There, you can buy almost any foodstuff at any time of year, for almost no money. I had reason to be in a local city last weekend, and visited something called a ‘shopping mall’. And by golly the waddling inhabitants of this strange place must indeed be buying all these foodstuffs- I wager they spend scant time clambering along hedgerows for their sustenance. It’s a different world for me.
Elsewhere, I was idly reading someone waffling on about how we have to move toward ‘zero net carbon emissions’. Now any system that involves burning 300 million year old fossil fuels to provide for an ill-informed urban mass is obviously light years from such plans. And somehow, my own efforts at scratching up a bit of fodder for the house, and then seeing hundreds…..no thousands of people barely aware of where food comes from, but hoovering it up in quantities that are killing them, reminds me….there is no chance. And pretending otherwise is just a childish fallacy.
Hey ho.
And to close, a warning. I’m going to use language I don’t fully understand, but which some of you might. My darling little wife informs me that some important Email communications from the RPA have been disappearing into a ‘spam folder’. Not ours, but one residing with our ‘server’, meaning we never even knew they were missing. Be aware!
