a secret orchard

cooking apples

The farm has an orchard tucked away alongside one of their crop fields which we didn’t know about last year. It has only just come to our attention through a conversation last weekend.

It is off the road and can’t be seen so it gets a little abuse by the occasional local who knows about it. The farm can’t keep an eye on it as it is a bit out of the way to be watched really but there is a lot of fruit.  I’m sure there is enough to go around.

apples and plums

It was planted a long time ago and was harvested every year and the produce was boxed up and sent off for sale. There is an old orchard ladder in the dike as you approach the edge of the orchard which would have been used by whoever was working to harvest.  The ladder is only really used by the farmer’s wife and a couple of the farm hands who have been shown it and can help themselves.  Now it is used by us!!

preparing

It is such a privilege to have access to this free food and I can tell you, it is pretty tasty.  We spent a few hours on Sunday afternoon picking (and sampling of course!) the apples (cookers), brambles, plums (the sweetest tasting ever), victoria plums (not ready yet), a type of tiny yellow plum (which I now know is a mirabelle plum), damsons (not ready yet) and pears (also not ready yet).

we are going back the next weekend we are there to check out the other plums, pears and damsons and perhaps pick some more apples but in the meantime, we got plums, brambles and apples to get started on.

ingredients

At the moment my confidence with jam making and chutneys isn’t very high and I certainly haven’t enough courage to tackle bottling or other rather complicated sounding processes so I am going to stick at the simple jam making processes and hopefully get more adept at it.

I was very happy with the outcome of my marrow and ginger jam so I thought I would have a go at bramble and apple, plum and then lavender flower jelly with the apples.

bramble and apple jam in the pot

Country living’s September issue was my weekend reading and could not have been better suited to our foraging. It has these very recipes in it along with a recipe for lavendar jelly, sloe jam, and also pear with peach jam.

The Bramble & Apple Jam recipe is as follows:

Brambles / Blackberries (whatever weight you have managed to forage) washed, de-stalked and checked for bugs.

Brambly Cooking Apples / Crab Apples (1/3 of the weight of brambles you collected). peeled, cored and chopped into small chunks

Sugar (equivalent in weight to brambles)

1/4 pint of water

juice of 2 lemons

cook all brambles with half of the lemon juice until softened.

cook apples in remaining lemon juice until soft.

put apples and brambles together in maslinpan with water and sugar.

heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring regularly.

bring to boil rapidly for about 20 mins or until setting point is reached.

skim off scum.

pop into warm sterilized jars.

label when cold.

bramble and apple jam

The Plum Jam recipe is as follows:

Plums (whatever weight you have managed to forage) washed, de-stalked and stones removed. keep the stones and pop into muslin bag.

Sugar (equivalent in weight to brambles)

1/4 pint of water

juice of 2 lemons. keep the lemon skins and pips and pop into the muslin bag with the plum stones.

cook all the plums and the lemon juice until softened. put the muslin bag od stones and lemons into pan half way through cooking and leave until ready to boil.

add water and sugar.

heat until sugar is dissolved, stirring regularly. remove muslin bag and discard.

bring to boil rapidly for about 20 mins or until setting point is reached.

skim off scum.

pop into warm sterilized jars.

label when cold.

plum jam

I ran out of time for anything else and have a load of cooking apples left along with some lavender flowers from the garden so I am going to do that lavender jelly jam next.