Weds 30th June

Really hectic day today: Chicken delivery first thing, and spent AGES cutting down nettles and thistles in the sheep field. And there's still loads left to do.

But then a drive along a lane with the flax coming into flower makes it all seem ok!!

Elderflower bucket smells lovely in the kitchen too. Shame I don't! Bath and bed.....

Monday - HOT HOT HOT!

Wow! Lovely but we need rain... enough to make the grass start growing again.

The elderflower mush is beginning to ferment, and I bottled another 4 litres of ginger beer.

Make Do And Mend: Picking and Making

Make Do And Mend: Picking and Making: "The elderflowers were picked away from the road, from a corner of the sheep field. These are two of the Jacob lambs!! The bucket is now co..."

Picking and Making

The elderflowers were picked away from the road, from a corner of the sheep field. These are two of the Jacob lambs!! The bucket is now covered and steeping away.

Leading nicely to the Ginger Beer Plant...

• Ginger Beer Recipe
• To begin with remove the fabric cover and elastic band and sterilise your kilner jar.Once thoroughly clean, pour into the jar ¾ pint warm (cooled boiled) water, then add 2tsps sugar, 2tsps ground ginger, and 1 tsp of yeast. Bread yeast or wine yeast whichever you can get.Leave for 3 days.Feed with 1 tsp dried ginger and 1 tsp sugar every day for one week.Then strain into a 5 litre bucket using a FINE filter bag for clear ginger beer or COARSE filter bag for cloudy ginger beer. The cloudy ginger beer will continue to ferment more than the clear so be warned it may be more alcoholic, and more prone to exploding if using glass bottles (but 2litre plastic bottles are ALWAYS recommended).Add 700g of sugar, 2 pints of warm water (cooled boiled water) and the juice of 2 freshly squeezed lemons.Then add 5 pints of cold water mix together well and pour into 2 sterilised 2 litre plastic drinks bottles. You might have enough left to fill some smaller bottles too.Traditionally the ‘yeast plant’ (strained residue) is then split into two, one half is put back into your jar with ¾ pint warm water, 2 tsps sugar, 2 tsps of dried ginger and the whole process starts again.The other half should be given to a friend, but if a coarse filter bag is used you might find that you need to reuse the whole residue yourself. Your ginger beer will be ready in two weeks time (if you can wait that long!) store somewhere cool and dark in the meantime.

Elderflower champagne..Recipe...

I had a quick look at all the various recipes both in books I've got and on the net, then decided that I'd use one that I've used before which is really similar to the Ginger Beer recipe I use.

Pick the elderflowers and use them as quickly as possible, they must be fully open and preferably a nice bright day - today is perfect! For 8 litres pick about 50 flower heads. Use a clean bucket and shake the flower heads gently to get rid of bugs, pour 4 litres hot previously boiled water into the bucket and the juice and zest of 5 lemons and 750g white sugar or brewing sugar. Once the sugar has dissolved add the elderflowers. Top up with 4 litres cold water. Cover and leave for 2 days when you should check to make sure it is fermenting, if not add some champagne yeast at this point. Cover and leave for another week, then strain and decant into sterilised bottles - either swing stop bottles or plastic lemonade type bottles. Try and leave for two weeks. Chill well before opening and don't open over carpet!!!

Try this and post your comments....

Elderflower Champagne...

I wanted to create a blog that was a reflection of the shop and could inspire the making of lots of lovely things. So my first blog as I'm sitting on the sofa is to say that today > I will mainly be making Elderflower Champange! Well picking the flowers and starting it off. It's been really difficult to get citric acid this year (something to do with it being cut with certain drugs) so if you can't get it don't panic just use lemons, however I do have it in the shop. Will post recipe I decide to go with later today. So many to choose from......