Earlier today I dropped Steph off at work, we are down to one car at the moment due to a faulty clutch, and then headed over to one of my good friends house with the intention of going for a walk. I took my foraging bag with me just in case I saw any elderberries or sloes for making wine. We did see plenty of elderberries but they were generally a little too high to reach or through some brambles so we didn't collect any. I was keeping an eye out for the sloes but 3 1/2 miles into the walk and we hadn't seen any. I was starting to feel hungry at this point and as I was walking I saw some windfall apples on the floor. At the side of the path was an apple tree with small red shiny apples. Me and my friend tried one and they were nice and sweet so we started to fill our bags. When I worked my way to the back of the tree I saw that there was another apple tree... And another, and another! In fact there were around seven trees altogether, not all had apples on them but most did. Within about 15 minutes I'd picked enough to fill my bag and eaten about 4 different varieties! My intention is to have a go at making some cider with this 5kg of apples. My friend who supplied me with the Bees earlier in the year is going to lend me a cider press, if you're reading this I thank you again in advance!
Last night I had a different friend around my house and we did some wine tasting. We started on some elderberry wine that was bottled a long while ago. The last time I tasted this wine it was a little rough but now it seems to have matured nicely and in a few more months I think it will be lovely, if it lasts that long! It's a shame I haven't had time to pick any elderberries this year. Next we moved onto some rhubarb wine that I made this year. It hasn't had ages to mature but was still lovely and also rocket fuel! I only had a few glasses and I could really feel the effects, especially the following morning!
The last section is all about plums! Again I have to thank my friend for this; my dad's plum tree didn't survive moving allotments so we didn't have any this year but Mark let me take as many as I wanted. Within half an hour picking them I'd filled a carrier bag to the point of breaking! I had enough to make a batch of wine and several jars of jam. The best thing about the plums was that there wasn't even a single grub in any of them, when we have made plum jam before we usually see a grub in at least every 10. One thing I noticed when picking the fruit was that there were a lot of Bees on the fruit. At first I thought they were wasps but looking at them they were defiantly Bees. I've not come across Bees on fruit before.
