weekend harvest

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weekend harvest
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dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46188
Location: yes

Posted: Sat Oct 15, 16 8:46 pm Post subject: weekend harvest

yesterday's dog walk provided
5kg apples for the week from ancient trees, 2 types of unknown id . one of them makes a good apple sauce.
kg field blewits . yummy.
1/2 kg elderberries to go with some of the apple.

today a shrooming venture to a 400 yr old broadleaved wood provided no edible shrooms ( lots of interesting ones though ) and rather nice alfresco snack of service tree fruit, tiny and you need to spit the seeds out but really nice in a not like anything else sort of way.

there were a lot of crab apples as windfall under a very old ,very very big one(800mm trunk 20m tall) tree but i cant be bothered with crabs at the mo as i have several tons of apples to get picked over the next couple of weeks so i will end up with plenty malus based stuff.
it isn’t all for me most will end up at the foodbanks either as apples or as juice and hopefully i will have help gathering and transporting.
it is from the various old trees in the dormouse orchard and spread around the old asylum hospital site ,I recon i have found most of the fruit trees but each year i seem to find a couple more ,this year i found 4 "new" pear trees but failed to spot the very short window between not ready and pulpy wasp food on the floor

however next year they will be on bi weekly obs in september.

autumn is quite a nice forage time

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15949

Posted: Sun Oct 16, 16 7:06 am Post subject:
It is rather good isn't it. We have started to get some fungi in the woods now. I think we had some sort of inkcap, but it is disintegrating now, so a bit hard to tell. There are some little pink ones that I did ID once, but can't remember now, and a fair number of stump puffballs.

mousjoos

Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 1986
Location: VERY Sunny SW France

Posted: Sun Oct 16, 16 11:55 am Post subject:

Not exactly 100% foraging but Thursday a colleague shot a pheasant where we were working & presented me with it
The next day he asked me if I like wild boar, to which my response was a positive one...at midday he gave me the front passenger side quarter of a 50 kg boar, plus the liver & heart
I gathered about 50 snails yesterday & the same again this morning along with a kilo of fallen walnuts...OH is very happy, given she's French.
In all, we have enough to feed us for about 10 days; & given the current state of our finances, this is very welcome

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46188
Location: yes

Posted: Sun Oct 16, 16 6:42 pm Post subject:
yum. walnut and boar liver pate would be on my menu from some of that, snails are ace but since i have reduced the slimey hoard they only present in ones and twos so they go flying rather than in the cleaning crock.

mousjoos

Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 1986
Location: VERY Sunny SW France

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 16 2:27 pm Post subject:
Just waiting for some reasonably price pork to arrive so we can continue with the paté...apparently it's a complicated recipe but we may try simplifying it a tad. Meanwhile more snails gathered plus some chestnuts found on the footpath

sgt.colon

Joined: 27 Jul 2009
Posts: 7380
Location: Just south of north.

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 16 11:51 am Post subject:
Well done on the Elderberries. I didn't get any this year, the birds seems to have eaten them all. Little buggers.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46188
Location: yes

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 16 12:10 pm Post subject:
90kg of apples processed for us since w e before last. 5 hrs and 3 people have got about 300 kg for the foodbanks this week more on saturday. blewits and ceps in shrooming news round here there seem to be more elderberries than the birds can manage, i have picked a few but dont like them as wine so i tend to take my share as flowers for cordial and cakes.

NorthernMonkeyGirl

Joined: 10 Apr 2011
Posts: 4627
Location: Peeping over your shoulder

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 16 7:01 pm Post subject:
I had a nibbled lunch of a few lingering blackberries, a few elderberries, then came home with pockets stuffed with "feral" apples. Nice and sharp, but too big/sweet to be true crab apples.

mousjoos

Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 1986
Location: VERY Sunny SW France

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 16 3:07 pm Post subject:
Gathered a decent wheelbarrow full of apples from the neighbour this afternoon Some green walnuts from work along with another bucketful of snails Seems I may have missed the sloes this year, but everything seems a bit f***ed up weather wise Also very few elderberries....anywhere it would seem

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46188
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 16 6:39 pm Post subject:
the sloe harvest round here has been very poor this year as well.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Oct 26, 16 7:30 pm Post subject:
Quite a lot of chestnuts around but not quite ready yet. Sloes/bullaces have some of last year's fruit still on them but pretty much nothing from this year.

mousjoos

Joined: 05 Jun 2006
Posts: 1986
Location: VERY Sunny SW France

Posted: Thu Oct 27, 16 11:27 am Post subject:
More chestnuts than you can shake a stick at here all on the ground in very prickly harnesses

Mistress Rose

Joined: 21 Jul 2011
Posts: 15949

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 16 7:18 am Post subject:
Seems like a good year for chestnuts. We visited a place in north Hampshire last weekend and people were out after them. Haven't checked for sloes yet, but I have a couple of places that I use. I even found a few along a line that doesn't usually produce a couple of weeks ago too.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46188
Location: yes

Posted: Fri Oct 28, 16 10:40 pm Post subject:
2kg chicken of the woods on a hounds birthday outing we got a very nice chicken and some venison sausages as well but that does not really count

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 46188
Location: yes

Posted: Sat Oct 29, 16 1:39 pm Post subject:
10 kg eating apples , little, russety, adams somethings kg ceps , 3 nice field blewits and a tiny wood blewit. and a lot of juicing / store apples for the foodbanks

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