Showing posts with label blackberries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blackberries. Show all posts

Friday 28 September 2012

Planting flowers, foraging and brewing

We have two elderberry ports and elderberry wine on the go at the moment, I will be brewing another elderberry wine this morning and we will be transferring the other wine in to a demijohn tonight, it is all very exciting. I was planting some flowers for my nan yesterday, I do her garden once a week and it brings me great pleasure, although I know almost nothing about flowers being out side brings the best into me, I love being in nature, touching looking, smelling. My nan who we have called dee dee before I was even around, also feeds me and my fiance up to the max, pies, fruit, cakes it is quite phenomenal. After that Brandon and I did some more foraging, we got caught in the rain and went under some trees for a little shelter, it is beautiful looking across the fields at the rain pouring down. We were in Lacock again and got a substantial amount of blackberries and elderberries, we then arrived back at my mums starving ready to wolf down her bacon and cheese flan, garden peas and potato waffles followed by my little sister Beth's delicious forked biscuits. All in all it was a fantastic day, although Brandon does seem to be showing a few flu like symptoms, we are praying it doesn't come to anything, we are off to Glastonbury tomorrow to a mind, body, spirit fare to sell fair trade products from India such as bags, it is all to do with a company called Freeset who give women prostitutes a chance to earn as much money by making bags and clothes. So we will be staying the weeks end in Brandon's van with our friend Helen, hopefully Brandon won't be suffering while we are there.

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Late night brewing

We decided that yesterday was the day for brewing, we couldn't wait any longer, the problem came when we weren't quite ready for brewing at 4 o'clock because the fruit was thawing out, and then Brandon had to pop to look at a job, after that he came round mine and had a cup of tea, the time was sneaking on and by the time we got back to his it was 7 o'clock, then we got into a deep chat which involved some tears and some honesty (we sometimes talk for hours about how we feel about certain subjects) time was sneaking on it's half past 8, Brandon is eating his dinner, I am starting to feel sleepy (I am awful with staying awake in the evening/night time I am such a morning person) I am also getting a little grouchy and the more tired I am the more I trip my words up and say random things. So we decide to brew anyway, we start at 9 o'clock we get EVERYTHING sterilised I didn't realise you have to be so meticulous, the sides, the untensils, the sink, the buckets, us, the demijohns, you name it we sterilised it. Then we cracked on with making elderberry port, it was then we realised we were missing a few key ingredients, namely oranges, sloes and suger. So off we went to the shops, the only shop open at quater to 10 is tesco on the other side of town, so we drive there, we pick up the oranges and suger and pop back to my nans to get the sloes and back to making the port at Brandons, we decide also at the last minute to make elderberry and blackberry wine, so we do that too, it takes a few hours to put all of the ingredients together (hopefully I will have the videos up soon, just need to firstly get Brandon to send them to me and then edit them) I am in bed by about 12:30, and although that may not seem late to anyone else, to me that is quite a late night, especially for brewing alcohol. But I am VERY excited to see the results, hopefully we haven't made a sleepy mistake!