Tag: #Harvest

Sloe Gin

Sloe gin is a British red liqueur made with gin, sloes and sugar.

There are many locations in and around our lovely village where one can gather sloes from the Blackthorn bushes which had beautiful white blossom in the Spring.  The number of sloes you will find on a blackthorn bush or tree each year is very much linked to the weather during the previous spring and summer. Too dry and the sloes will be small and shrivelled. Too wet and cold and they will not develop at all. A good crop of plump, well-ripened sloes needs the perfect balance of warmth and water. This year – crops are good 🙂

There is a lot of debate about when to pick sloes. For the best flavour, wait until the berries are ripe. They should be a rich dark purple and should squash easily between your fingertips. It’s a good sign if they’ve already started to drop naturally to the ground.

If you’re picking them for sloe gin then traditionally you wait until after the first frost. These days, there’s no reason why you can’t pick them earlier, bag them up and pop them in your freezer to mimic that first frost. The theory behind this is that the frost splits the skins so the juices can flow into your gin without you having to go to the effort of pricking all the berries.

Ingredients

  • 1 litre bottle of gin
  • 500g sloes
  • 250g caster sugar
  • 1 large sterilised jar or 2 empty gin bottles

Method

  1. Wash sloes and seal in an airtight bag. Freeze overnight or until you’re ready to make the gin.
  2. Put frozen sloes into sterilised jar or empty gin bottles.
  3. Add gin then the sugar directly onto frozen sloes. Their skins will split which means you avoid the laborious pricking of each individual sloe berry.
  4. Seal jar tightly and shake well.
  5. Store jar in a cool, dark place and shake every other day for a week. After the first week you only need to shake it once a week for 2 months.
  6. Leave for a minimum of 12 weeks.  The liquid should now be dark red and ready for drinking, although it does improve over time.

Serve sloe gin neat, over ice or drizzle over ice cream.  You can also make the cocktail Sloe Royale by adding some to sparkling wine, prosecco  or champagne.

#Broadwindsor,#Dorset,#Harvest,#Madron,#SloeGin,#Drink,#BeMarry,#BeKind,#BeSafe

 

Madron – the Autumn Equinox

The Autumn equinox occurs on Tuesday, September 22nd*.  Summer has come to an end.
Madron, sometimes called Mabon is the time of year when crops are harvested and a time where once again light and dark are in balance. The wheel of the year turns: the sun is rising later now, and nightfall comes sooner.
Themes of celebration include grain, balance, thanksgiving and gratitude for what you’ve “harvested” – and abundance 🙂 Prepare your chutneys, jams and preserves and store for winter. It is a time to throw out the old and take on the new although it is also the feast of the healer, bringing justice. This Sabbat is marked by the release of symbolic prisoners such as old arguments or regrets,
Madron is very much about healing and putting mistakes behind us so we can move on and learn from the lessons we have had and move on with lessons yet to be learned.

*By the meteorological calendar, the first day of Autumn is always 1 September; ending on 30 November.

#Broadwindsor,#Dorset,#Autumn,#Equinox,#Madron,#Mabon,#Harvest,#Heal,#WinterIsComing,#SocialDistancing,#BeKind,#StaySafe

 

Lammas on 1st & Full Moon on 3rd

Lammas is celebrated on August 1st and is the first of the three harvest festivals (the Autumnal Equinox and Samhain being the others). The first fruits of summer are enjoyed. There are many festivals and ceremonies but throughout, there is a custom of climbing hills and mountains – we have Lewesdon hill our our doorstep 🙂

August’s Full Moon is on Monday, 3rd and is known as the Sturgeon Moon.  So called because the giant sturgeon of the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain in North America were most readily caught during this part of summer. It is also referred to as Full Green Corn Moon, signalling that the corn was nearly ready for harvest, Grain Moon, Fruit Moon, Barley Moon. Wheat Cut Moon, and Blueberry Moon.*

The word “sturgeon” means “the stirrer”, which is what this giant freshwater fish does when it is looking for food; it stirs up the mud and silt on river and lake bottoms.  The sturgeon is sometimes called a “living fossil,” as it belongs to a family of fish that has existed for more than 135 million years.
SturgeonIn ancient times, it was common to track the changing seasons by following the lunar month rather than the solar year, which the 12 months in our modern Gregorian calendar are based on.

*For millennia, people across Europe, as well as the Native American tribes, named the months after features they associated with the Northern Hemisphere seasons, and many of these names are very similar or identical.

#Broadwindsor #Dorset #WestDorset #Lammas #FullMoon #Sturgeon #LookUp #FirstFruits #Harvest #Celebration #StaySafe