Thursday 18 November 2010

Elderflower wine

Last year's elder flower wine. Hard to describe. Dry, but fruity, fragrant, delicious. Very drinkable. Goes very well with Asian food. Or just by itself. :)

Tuesday 16 November 2010

Elderflowers

This is one of my favourite trees. Our variegated elder tree.
One of our sheep seems to like it, too.The flowers are beautiful, abundant and very fragrant. We made elderflower wine last year for the first time and it was an absolute hit.
We have already started a new batch, but will probably do several. I will also dry some flowers for teas - as it is supposed to be very good for when you have a cold or flu. Also good to fight hay fever.

Maybe after all that wine making and drying for teas, we still have some flowers left on the tree and they can mature to berries? I have never tasted anything made from elderberries, so would be keen to experiment. Jam? Wine? Drying for medicinal purposes?

Monday 15 November 2010

Poppy!

This one popped up unexpectedly in an empty pot. Not really sure how the seed got into it. A very enjoyable surprise!

Wednesday 3 November 2010

Jersey milk rocks!

I have made another cheese with milk from our favourite jersey cow, Chocolate. This time a Caerphilly. Instead of the 'miserable' 500g - 600g of resulting cheese, the jersey milk yielded a cheese of a whopping 1.3kg!

Here it is. Air drying a few days, before it goes into the cheese fridge for at least 3 weeks.