Making Damson Vodka

Quite a few people recently have asked me how I make the  Damson and the Blackcurrant flavoured Vodkas I give away as Christmas gifts.

So I thought I would tell you, again :)

Take a clean jar, I used a Le Parfait jar, but any wide necked jar will do.

Put in washed, pricked fresh fruit and add spirit of choice. I have found Vodka or brandy to be good - it doesn't have to be an expensive brand.

If you don't want to have to prick the fruit, freeze the fruit whole, then put it in the jar and pour on the spirit. The liquid will rapidly cause the fruit to split.

Add sugar. It is better to add too little as you can always add more, if you want it sweeter when you taste test it!

Put the jar somewhere you can shake/upend until all the sugar has dissolved.

Put away in a cool, dark place.

Leave for up to a year...I have found if you leave it longer than that it might get a slightly musty taste.On the other hand it might become divine and utterly delish! So it is up to you to keep on tasting the jar occasionally!

Strain (I use one of those permanent coffer filters for this inside a funnel, all sterilised) into a suitable bottle ( I save the small wine bottles one can get (25 or 35 cl) is these are ideal to give as gifts as well!)


Label.

Drink!



Damsons in Vodka and sugar



After a day of shaking/soaking

Mounds of produce from the garden, bottling, preserving - it's that time of year!

September here at Compost Mansions means picking produce, blanching, freezing, dehydrating and preserving by various means.
 
The kitchen is full of steam from blanching and the bench is full of beans, pears, plums, tomatoes and peppers from the garden

 I need these fermentation vessels to make this years cider

So finally I got round to bottling the cider we made last year.

 45 l of the stuff!

The tomatoes from the polytunnel are nearly finished but the pepper plants are still producing loads of peppers - these were washed, cut up and roasted before being frozen.

 

And we have so many beans this year! Runner and French beans - I have never had such a crop in our entire 16 years here.


Compostman is using the fine weather to paint the exterior woodwork all round the house - a huge job which takes up his time.

Art in Herefordshire - h. Art Week

# h.Artweek   #h.Art

We have the most amazing artists and craftspeople here in Herefordshire and during September every year we have a fabulous event called h.Art, which runs for a week all over the county.

Established some 12 years ago, h.Art is a prestigious annual event across Herefordshire, with a huge variety of art on show with at least 16 different media, 250 individual artists and 100 different venues across the whole county

h.Art this year was on from 6th - 14th Sept so last week Compostman and I decided to go and visit Mike and Tamsin Abbott's event: Greenwood and Glass, just up the road from us at their workshops near Bishops Frome.You may remember we have been to Mike's wood in the past and also to talks at blue ginger gallery by both Tamsin and Mike.

Tamsin makes exquisite illustrated stained glass panels, painted and engraved, depicting rural landscape, folklore and fairytale.

Mike makes chairs from local ash and oak, cleft and shaved to retain the vibrancy of the living tree. He has over 25 years experience in running courses in green wood chair-making and is the author of many books on green woodworking.

 They live in the most beautiful place (but then nearly ALL of Herefordshire is beautiful!)

 This is Tamsin's workshop

We arrived and were delighted to find Hannah Willow and Pamela Thom Rowe were there as well as Mike and Tamsin.  Hannah makes the most amazing jewelry and Pam spins and dyes and creates beautiful things from her yarns.

Tamsin's stained glass is amazing

and it was displayed to great effect on these wonderful frames (made by Mike I suspect!)

Another lovely warm September day, my favourite time of the year :) We had a good chat, sitting on Mike's beautiful chairs, in the sunshine, drinking coffee.




Compostman and I came away and had a trip into Ledbury on the way home

and then I picked some more produce - tomatoes this time to go into the dehydrator.

Lastly, I finally washed and ironed the Celtic throw I bought in Wales so I put it on the sofa - do you like it? I do :)

Even more apple stuff !

Having scratted and pressed over 100Kg of apples so far this week we now have 25 bottles of pasteurised juice and 30 l of  cider on the go.

so as it was fine today, we went and picked some more apples,


 

 It was glorious outside, sunny and crisp and with just a hint of wind and a fabulous blue sky.

Compostman picking apples

And, just to prove I do actually do, do some of the work around here (!) I graciously allowed myself to be photographed in action..

 We weighed each bucket

 

 and then I graded them into "juice" or "cider" quality.

 This is some of the pommace from the scratting and pressing we did earlier in the week. All added to the compost bins now, to make some beautiful compost next year :)

After a morning of apple picking another 150 Kg now await my attention to be turned into something else.



 I think tomorrow, I will be mostly pressing apples again!

Yet more apple stuff

So today started with yet more apple washing

While Compostman scratted some I had washed earlier

 I bottled up yesterdays juice and pasteurised them, 13 bottles as a time.

 
Here they are, cooling down. I did 26 bottles today, as well as washing, juicing and pressing many, many more apples.

Compostgirl was roped in to help :)

Here is a 30 l fermentation vessel, full of juice-to-be-turned-into-cider-by- magic ( well, or biochemistry!)

Washing up takes a very long time!

Tomorrow we are having a day off apples and will be doing Other Things - we need a rest!

Patio update and a very wet Fri

On Thursday builders Russell and Lee returned to work on the patio, joined by Rob in the afternoon. We had a lovely fine day so they got a huge amount of work done - I couldn't believe how much more of the patio was laid!

 It is looking really good.

 

 We have made a start on filling in the large hole in the meadow

 
Spot the Compostman?

As always any thing which happens around here has an interested obvserver, either cat or chicken.

  

The plan was for the builders to return on Fri and hopefully finish the patio slabs and maybe get some of the pointing done, but of course we has epic rain all day on Friday, so the plan was ( literally) a washout.

I spent a lot of Fri resting my back, sewing, crocheting, writing and creating order out of the chaos which was my desk.

And harvesting more stuff.

(nearly) Wordless Wednesday - more of the same!

From this...

 And this...

 And this...

plus a whole lot more produce grown in the garden...

To this - 20 portions of  vegetable and red lentil soup and 7 jars of courgette, tomato and plum chutney. And a load of stuff blanched and frozen. The Dehydrator is also on.

As well as ...

Patio work today has been lots of stone deliveries, moving stone around, taking rubble away to fill in the hole-where-the-pond-once-was ( yes we have started on that as well !) Then lots of compacting down and getting the stone level along with putting replacement manhole covers down. The first slabs have been laid by the back door, and the cats have a temporary ramp to get up to the cat flap - they are not impressed AT ALL and are mostly hiding in various bedrooms in disgust.

It's all progressing very fast, our builders are great and work well with us and we just need a couple more days of good weather and it will be done.

Then I can get on with making the new flower borders.

Setting aside the worrying  stuff about Fracking - we have been harvesting lots of produce from the veg patch in the last few days.

I feel a sense of dread at what the future may hold for us here around Much Marcle if Fracking does come here :(

I have just told a friend about it and she was shocked - she had no idea of the issues involved or that there was such a threat in Herefordshire.

But life has to go on, even with all the turbulence around us. We have a water leak in our kitchen, and have been lifting spuds, and having friends round to drink tea.

Please, if you could, sign the petition Ban Fracking in Herefordshire

House hen?

Reminder! RHS Hampton Court Flower Show ticket give away. To enter you must  leave a comment on the original blog post. Do this before midnight on 30th June please. Good luck!

This is Amber.  She loves me. She wants to be a house hen
.
 :-)

She waits outside the back door, choosing to be away from the flock, so she can see me and accompany me when I come out of the house. She then follows me around, bwarking and crooning and chuntering, in that way hens do. If I sit down, she comes and sits next to me. And if I go out in the car, she droops around looking sad, until I return. Then she is happy again. She is the sweetest little hen :-)

And if she can, she comes in the house.

And if I am upstairs, and she gets inside the house

She comes looking for me :-)

In other news, I picked my first tomato today

 

and the strawberry rush has begun :-)