As we approach the summer solstice, the red berries are starting to ripen. We have to cover them with one of our large sheets of nylon bird netting. If we don’t cover the ripening fruit, the birds will take the lot in a couple of days.

We will do this every 2nd day for a week now and then once or twice more during the next week and they will all be all but gone before Xmas.

Back in the kitchen, Janine weighs the munificence of the canes. We have harvested 3 1/2 kilos this morning, and another 3 kilos the day before. It’s a great start to the day and the week.

Bach in the cool of the house, we re-hydrate with a cup of last years preserved dark grape juice. It’s so thick and concentrated, it is 100% grape juice and nothing else, pasteurized and vacuum sealed. It’s really amazing stuff that bears no resemblance to anything that you can buy in a shop. The commercial grape juices that i have tried, taste like they are 80% water in comparison. This stuff is just so rich and thick and concentrated in comparison. So much so that it has to be mixed 50/50 with water, otherwise it is just too strong. It’s a great natural, flavourful thirst quencher.

While I go back to work down to the kiln factory finishing up the last of the work on the current job, that is due for delivery on Wednesday, Janine stays in the kitchen to make todays harvest into 3 gratifying indulgences.

First, a youngberry sorbet, which is made from the juice sieved from the berries, no pulp in there, she only adds a very small amount of gelatine and some orange juice and then it is churned in the freezer, until it sets.

juice of 500g youngberries

juice of a couple of oranges

1 tbs of gelatine powder

Second, she makes a youngberry jelly. This jelly is a desert jelly. It is made with the berry juice and gelatine and placed in the fridge until it sets.

First bring the whole fresh fruit to the boil and mash it all up with a potato masher as it is heating. This liberates the juice quicker. Pour through a sieve or cheese cloth to remove the pulp and pits. While still warm, pour the juice into a medium pottery bowl and add one tbs of dried gelatine and stir until dissolved. Leave to cool, stirring occasionally while cooling to keep the gelatine in suspension. Once cooled, place in the fridge to set.

 

 

The season cycles past us and spring has gone in a very busy flash of research, firings, workshops, more firings, exhibitions and kiln building. The garden took a back seat and now it’s time for catch-up. We managed to get some time in there, just enough to keep everything watered and growing. In the last week of spring I finally got the time to get in there and do a thorough weeding and cleaning out. We picked the last of the winter veggies, like broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.

. 

I managed to preserve the cauliflowers into Mustard pickles.

Take one large cauliflower. It doesn’t matter if it is a bit past its best and starting to ‘burst’. You only need the small florets, add a red and green capsicum and a cucumber, plus a couple of brown onions, all diced pop fine into small bite sized chunky pieces. Soak them in brine overnight of 1/2 cup of iodised salt in 2 litres of water.

The next day, bring this to a simmer and drain off the brine. Rinse and drain again.

Depending on how much you have to do, heat up approximately a litre of vinegar ,add two cups of sugar,  +1 Tb spoon of mustard powder, + 1/2 Tb spoon of curry powder and another of turmeric. Mix it all together well and bring it up to the boil. Once it’s heated, add in 1/2 a cup of flour and stir well until it thickens. Add in the drained vegetable pieces and bring back to the simmer fora minute or two.

Spoon into heated glass jars from the oven and seal with ‘pop’ top lids.

Janine makes cauliflower soup with hers as well as a batch of broccoli soup, some of which she froze. The cabbage went into our own idiosyncratic version of Australian okonomiyaki and the beetroots got pickled and preserved in spiced vinegar.

Although we have planted out all the summer veggies seeds and some seedlings now, it is still too soon to get much return. The tomatoes are flowering  and the earliest plants have set some small fruit. I was a bit late getting them in, so I can’t see us getting any ripe fruit before Xmas. However, now the hot weather is here, along with the regular Monday afternoon thunderstorm and its hail, we will just have to wait and see what fruit we can get. I hope that there isn’t another hailstorm tomorrow. We’ve had enough hail for the time being.

We fill the short days of winter with lots of busy, necessary work. Pruning, preserving and cooking. We are both making marmalade at the moment, in our own respective ways, using the methods and recipes that we have each developed over the years. We have quite enough now to last us for the rest of the year.

Even though the days are short and the weather is cold, the garden is still producing all our  meals. One or the other, sometimes both of us, go out to the garden at dusk and pick what is at its best and just bursting to be eaten. Food is plucked direct from the garden bed, into the basket and is cooked and on the table within the hour. It just couldn’t be fresher, or more rewarding. I have managed to scale and time the plantings through the summer and autumn, so that there is still enough green produce coming through now, even though everything has slowed down considerably.

I collect more mushrooms from the recent fungal blooms. I give them a good scrub with the bristle brush and clean them up and make them presentable. There is always bits of grass and other organic ‘natural’, but unwanted ‘stuff’ stuck to them. I slice them and lay them out to dry.

Once crisp, they are added into our stock of dried fungi in the glass jars on the kitchen dresser. We collect more of them as they appear and have fresh mushroom risottos, almost every night for a week. Each time with a different vegetable from the garden. Broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, capsicums and carrots.

We have loads of golden berries coming on at the moment. Janine makes golden berry (gooseberry) and feijoa fruit mince and uses it to fill a fruit sponge, served with Edmonds custard. It makes a marvellous pudding. It is tangy, sweet and mouth-wateringly luscious and smooth. I have two helpings.

We have spent the last three days pruning the stone fruit trees. Everything is dormant and deciduous at the moment. Except the earliest peaches, that have started to flower already. We work steadily and meticulously. Opening out the centre of the trees, restoring the ‘vase’ shape. Removing the water-shoots, thinning, shaping and pruning to an outward facing bud.

After 3 days of muscle challenging constant work, we are tired, but very pleased with our selves. We have finished pruning our 100 or so trees and spent an equal amount of time dragging all the spent and removed branches down the back to the burn pile and stacking it all up ready to be burnt in a months time, when it has dried out enough to sustain a fire that will purge the pruned wood of any disease and fungal spores that might otherwise infect the orchard trees.

We celebrate with a lovely dinner of wild mushroom risotto, collected directly off the lawn outside the back door, and then a great fortifying breakfast of truffled, creamed eggs. It looks like this will be the last truffle for this season, so we make the most of it.