Although having a couple of lovely sunny days this weekend, there is definitely something autumnal in the air, and if nothing else given away by our harvest. We are picking a punnet or two of blackberries every day, and starting to keep an eye on the hazelnuts, well the ones the squirrels have left.
We have also picked most of our apples, from the bramley and unknown No1 trees. We still have a few others to bring in, and the ones we cannot reach. The old bramley tree had not been pruned in some time before we inherited it, and we are slowly bringing it back into shape, but because we want a harvest too, we are just working on about 1/5 of the tree each winter. Meanwhile it has ridiculously long vertical branches shooting off into the sky baring impossible to reach even on a wobbly ladder apples. We shall have to have them as windfalls – if the jackdaws don’t have them first. Still, these long prunings are working out well as bean poles.
It’s not all autumnal foods though, as we are still picking buckets of both French and runner beans (climbing on those apple pruning bean poles), eating what we can and the surplus going into the freezer – which is good and bad.. good as we hope to do as last year and keep ourselves pretty much in veg all year round, but bad as we keep clearing space for Rogan, when he is slaughtered.. but keep using it. In fact freezer space is now called Rogan space.. and there isn’t any, so I am not sure quite where he is going to fit… We keep eating from the freezer, but with the food coming in, space never appears. Perhaps we are going to have to consider getting another freezer… but then we will only fill that too.
You have blackberries? I’m envious – you have to search really hard to find any in the hedgerows around us at the moment.
We’ve ended up with three freezers at home, two chest freezers and an up-right one, and still run out of space sometimes!
We also have a spear one in the poly tunnel. We’ll have ten sheep to go in them soon as well as two goat kids and ten chickens.
Have you ever tried bottling anything? I/we haven’t but I was reading about it over the weekend
i just worry that there will never be enough freezers!
nope not done any bottling. worry a little as you do have to get it right or can be a health risk
We have two freezers – an upright one in the house and a chest freezer in what used to be Alan’s photography darkroom
before the world went digital – it’s a large well insulated shed in the garden and we’ve also used it for storing potatoes and onions.
we have two and a half.. 2 uprights and a fridge freezer bit. and they are all full of our fruit and veg….