Making cider

Yes we are still…making cider! What a full time job doing this can be at times, I have put in my order for some cider vinegar which is the end product I will use. But it looks like R plans on making gallons of the stuff, now he has worked out how to make it far less labour intensive. He finally realised that he needed to pulp the apples before putting them into the press, he had been cutting them up pretty finely, but that wasn’t enough. Now they are pulped through the juicer it makes pressing them so much easier! He’s now waiting for the rain to stop before going to collect some more today.

Whilst we are waiting we have been making FD1’s dinners, and the dogs dinner has become quite interesting just lately, as she today will be getting turkey, beetroot, carrot, buckwheat and of course the apple pulp, I put in few herbs of rosemary, and sage, and it smelt lovely!

It has been so wet here just lately that the cereal crops in the fields near where we live are all rotting, I have no idea what they will do with them now, as they are all going black and definitely look the worse for wear. Terrible when you think about it, how much is probably going to now go to waste, when they could of been harvested at least 2 – 3 weeks previously. This probably means prices will increase for these commodities, strange how at one time we would never of noticed that at all, now we are very aware of the environmental factors affecting our foods. We had been also keeping an eye on the plantain plants to collect their seeds as you can eat them, we were going to mix them with the pendulous sedge to make oatcake type biscuits, but they are also now too wet and mostly rotting away. In fact lots of the woodland plants are rotting, we have noticed the only things that are doing well are mushrooms, which we are now keeping our eyes open for. We already have quite a lot of mushrooms dried, St Georges, Dryads Sadle, and Common Puffballs from earlier this year, so we still have them to keep us going.

Enjoying the countryside, it’s nothing to fear!

It’s interesting with the rising impact of food, fuel and gas prices, how at a time when probably growing your own, and wild foraging is becoming more of a viable option, I hear a programme being advertised on the radio which is about the dangers of gardening! Tetanus, and other diseases which you could catch, even I was scared and I am out in it everyday!! But people lived for years growing their own, foraging etc, before we even knew about these ‘dangers’, and in many respects were very healthy.

I really do think the media just want to create a level of fear around those things which they can’t control, and for which large corporations don’t benefit from in any large way. They of course want you to stay in, you are using up electricity, and gas that way, which we don’t do when we are out all the time! It’s going to be hard enough for some people to afford to live a quality of life, but to have this fear of the unknown continually pushed at you is ridiculous. I’m not saying that there isn’t a level of knowledge and mostly common sense needed, but the rest is scare mongering.

The outdoors is not enjoyed enough, yesterday we were out walking and picking apples, apples which people are leaving due to not really knowing if they are ok to eat or not any more. Isn’t that ridiculous, that people have become so distanced from something which really is so easily identifiable. But it is the fear that you might catch something which is constantly played out through adverts, and the media which has created this cycle.

We enjoy the countryside everyday, eating from it 2-3 times a week, collecting everything from berries, to mushrooms, to herbs, and greens, it is something which we love doing. We met a family yesterday out playing, and they were saying how they were so different from their friends who would never consider taking their children out in the evening to play as they were doing. What a real loss of true world experience, the media scare parents into thinking their children need keeping in the house, within our sight, even tagged, yet I really believe the danger is from the media and large corporations that run them with their business interest solely in profiteering, not from the woodlands that we play in!