Elderflowers, Allotments and a Strange Thing to Say.

It's that time of year again, a time when we are almost inundated with fermentation buckets and demi-johns full off all manner of elderflowery concoctions. As I said in a previous post, the hedgerows are just laden this year and cannot be resisted, so Isabella and I set off to gather some ready for a gallon or three of elderflower champagne as a change from the cordials we have already got underway. In fact, we are only just finishing the very last of the previous year's batch of cordial and will need to make a similarly large amount this time to see us through once more. I have put the recipe for elderflower cordial back onto my website so click if you would like to have a go.



I have such a gatherer's instinct and cannot bear empty cupboards. I positively thrive on stacking the wood away in autumn, scouring hedgerows for anything that can be made into chutneys, jams and beverages or cooked up into delicious meals. I have never been any different and have made things like this almost my entire life, yet the pleasure of it never leaves me. I am lucky in that Dave is the same and also has made wines, etc since he was young and so we share in this love of the countryside and all it offers, creating our own version of it in our garden. The mixed hedgerow in the front is overgrown and desperately in need of a sort through, yet it offers food for goldfinches and blue tits, hedgehogs and slowworms, frogs and toads - why change anything then? Tom and I sat for a brief tea break today and watched young dragonflies and shimmering damselflies of azure blue hover for a moment before darting away.



Before collecting elderflowers Isabella and I had a brief stint at the allotment, digging some new potatoes and a few other bits and bobs after sowing a bed of peas together. Man can that girl throw a long way! This is what we found today: onions



sprouts



Blackcurrants are ripening ready to be turned into ice-creams and cordials and wines, and to nestle on soft pillows of cream for a summer day's pavlova




Broad beans are almost ready and we picked a few tiny ones to add to the red and green salad leaves from the cut-and-come-again patch. I love to add chive and nasturtium flowers, mint, marjoram and rocket from our home garden too.



At home the figs are looking good again. Last year we ate some for the first time and they were just heavenly with that seductive velvetiness of the ripened fruit mingling with the syrupy juices...mmm.



You know, when I was pregnant with Isabella some poor deluded fool once said to me that I wouldn't be able to have any holidays for years now....this keeps coming back into my mind of late as it was such a bizarre thing to say to someone like me. Firstly, I couldn't see why a child would stop anyone having a holiday if they wanted one. Secondly, are holidays that important (and if so I question the homelife) and lastly, but most importantly to me - child or holidays? Abslolutely no contest as I get to do all these wonderful things every day, every year with Davey all our lovely children (even the older ones who head off all over the place and still love to come back for more, though the pic below is a few years old now as we haven't done strawberry picking for a while, but I am currently eating masses so it seemed relevant!).



Yep, no contest.


And anyway, look where we live!



Have a lovely weekend xx

Sand and play.

You can never quite tell what a day will bring from how it begins can you? Yesterday as I made packed lunches in the kitchen the day was dull and cold, not very promising at all. Isabella raced from the bathroom where she had been brushing her teeth with Lucy, her face now crumpled and bellowing, "Lucy hurt myself on the nose!"
Lucy, quite oblivious to this great distress due to the fact that she had indeed had little to do with said nose, was busy communing with nature. Strange noises emitted from the bathroom which brought to mind how I imagine a drowning whale may sound.
"Eeeooh...ahhhhhhohh....ark, ark.." (now look, you get the drift)

"Lucy, what are you doing?"

"Talking to the birds through the window, Mummy"

" But they don't talk like that."

"Well, they're responding."

When will I learn how pointless it is to correct a Lucy?



Lunchtime saw the clouds disperse to be replaced by a hot and blazing sun and the chance for an after-school beach trip was here. We have not yet sorted the bag which sits in our car from now till late autumn, a bag full of towels and sun cream, buckets and spades, sketchbooks, playing cards and all the paraphanalia necessary for a family who virtually live on the beach. It is so much easier to have this ready should the chance arise than to waste time finding it all before heading off, but yesterday I only had a towel and the camera. No matter, I don't suppose the girls will go in the still icy water. Yeah, right...




The tide was out and we clambered over the rocks to the clean-washed sand beyond. Tights and shoes were cast aside. As the sun beat down, Isabella trailed after her sister into the shallows and then followed her as she leapt into a pool...up to her thighs; skirt now also removed.



They swooped and swirled across the smooth, golden sand like the seagulls wheeling high overhead, sheer pleasure and excitement in the voices ringing as one long slim pair of legs danced along with one much shorter, rounder pair. So what if the school uniform was soaked? Plenty of time for it to be washed and dried later, but these moments are precious and so much more important.



The light continued to shine down on the crystal water creating shadows out of the ripples breaking the surface in the oh-so-light breeze.



A mermaid's face of sea lettuce eyes and pebble nose, a tangle of hair and leaves dried in the sun for a mouth, was created by Lucy...



while our own little mermaid continued to run in and out of the water like some little sea-wraith, giggling as the cooler currents seeped slowly in.



Finally, after clambering back over the rocks to warm in the sun it was time to wave goodbye to the beach. We had passed a wonderful hour and a half, and now food was needed. Home to tea and a delicious drink of our elderflower cordial, a gallon of which we had somehow overlooked from last season's making. So flowery and evocative for us, like drinking memories if that makes any sense? I will post the recipe again on my website soon as it was so popular last year.



And so it seems the day that started so unpromisingly turned into a winner full of sea and sand and little girls' laughter. Just about perfect (and Isabella fell asleep within a moment of going to bed instead of calling out that she is just a 'little bit dead' as is so often her wont...sigh).



Have a lovely day x

At Last!

Yesterday evening Lucy and I had a campfire and cleared away some of the enormous weeds that have taken over the garden a la triffids! It was a gorgeous evening and she worked away so hard. We are planning to do some more tonight and I think we shall have some marshmallows at the ready for toasting as a special treat - yum.





I have been thinking of adding a page to my website where I could put down some of the ways we do things here at Poltisko Farm (the farm that isn't if you know what I mean); I mean the sort of things that we have always done as a family and which are an integral part of our everyday life. Finally, I have got this underway thanks to the many, many requests I have had for our elderflower cordial recipe. For those of you who are interested in having a go at this delicious drink just click on the website link on the right of this page and look for the 'what we are doing' bit on the menu bar.





I am quite excited about this page as I can share some of the projects we have such fun with - the making of sloe gin and elderberry rob, the winemaking, the many, many recipes Dave and I have developed over all these years. I can explain how to make a pizza oven or how we grow our herbs for cutting and drying. I might even include some sewing projects for those who fancy taking me on at my own game! Then again, there may be a bit on how to keep hens for those who are thinking that way...who knows, but what I do know is that I shall have fun and it will be a journey through the seasons as most of what we do is governed by the ever changing landscape and what it has to offer.





I hope you will pop over to have a look and let me know what you think - please also allow for the fact that I need to work on it a little more. More things will be added regularly. For those of you who do not wish to visit my website I can only apologise as I simply cannot take the time to put them in two places and had to make a business decision (for once!).





In the meantime, above is the gate Dave made for our allotment - how cute is that?
And here is our little ramshackle shed which we moved to the allotment and which has left a huge hole in the garden that will become a den for the children in the summer holidays.





Enjoy your day xx

Elderfower magic.

Yesterday afternoon I decided I had finally had enough of feeling like rubbish - great grammar there. Sick of feeling that I was on a merry-go-round of problems and worries with no control; in other words, I felt I had become someone life happens to rather than someone who makes life happen and it doesn't suit me. Maybe I am a bit of a control freak, but I find this a scary way to live, always wondering what the next 'thing' will be or dreading collecting the post/ answering the phone for fear of more bad news. This is not living as I know it and yesterday I had enough.





I collected Sam and Lucy from school and drove to pretty Mylor Bridge (yes, I have mentioned it a before as I love it so). This pretty creek village has a post office right on the water and I needed to collect car tax, so a trip seemed worth the short drive. I think with hindsight - that wonderous thing - that I probably felt the need to be soothed and feel a bit safe, for want of a better word, and Mylor has always been that place for me. Anyway, the children sat in the car watching the boats bob on the high tide and the kids playing football in the field on the opposite bank until I returned and then it hit me: we go on a harvesting fest! Nothing better than a spot of gathering when you feel a bit blue, so we drove home, collected Mr Dave (who was miraculously early for once) and headed back to the lanes of Mylor.





It was such fun, more so because I expected Sam to say he would stay at home as he is 18 now and has done this for most of his life, but he practically leapt into the car and brought a smile to his mamma's face with his eagerness to participate - bless him. Jolly handy too as his 6ft plus height could reach far higher than either me or Dave.





We walked, we drove, stopping the car whenever we spotted another cluster of bushes (and I am talking lanes that probably see a tractor a few times a year not busy side lanes here). It was such fun watching everybody clutching their bags of the gorgeous creamy flowers with that magical perfume you either love or loathe rather like Marmite. Finally we headed for home where dinner was eaten, baby bathed and put to bed and the elderflowers counted - 110 flower umbels in all! Good grief! And just in case anyone is worried here, we made sure we left plenty on each plant and there were still plenty to come (hurray, elderberry wine/cordial/jelly...).





So here's what we made - two vats of elderflower cordial and one huge batch of elderflower champagne which unfortunately doesn't keep too long and will have to be drunk rather quickly to avoid wastage...oh dear! In all we made gallons of the stuff, but more importantly we had such a grat time doing it.





And do I feel more like me? Yes I do. Will it last? Probably not but
it's a start, and there's always the champagne when the going gets tough! So my thought for all those feeling blue today is to get thee out into some countryside if at all possible and pick these beautiful flowers. Cordial can also be made with dried flowers so town dwellers can still join in and if the bushes in your area aren't flowering yet then you can still go out to earmark the ones you will be using.





P.S. Thank you all so much for the good wishes; it means a lot x

PPS. We've also been making ginger beer, but I'll save that for another day! xx