Blackberry wine

This one is slightly different recipe than currant wine. I have (or actually Dona has collected) 1.7kg blackberry fruits from next door wild allotment plot, although they can be collected in parks, train lines, common lands etc.. they are everywhere. It is important to collect dry fruits on warm sunny day to ensure maximum sugar content.

Since blackberry is wilder fruit than currant fruit I treat it in different manner, there may be more "guests" (maggots etc...) growing in blackberry fruits and fermentation needs to be slower. Firstly fruits were crushed using trusted potato masher in the bucket. Then, learned with experience I have added 3lts of boiling water (I am preparing one gallon of wine). After cooling down next morning must was treated with a spoonful of pectolase to help breaking down celuloidal structure of fruit.

Tomorrow morning, after 24 hrs I will add a spoon full of yeast and yeast nutrient. Before adding sugar I will strain must through nylon sieve to get rid of rogue elements. Mixture has very impressive bright colour and should develop nice bright sparkling dark red colour once bottled, I will report on it's progress. Currently I am on lookout for sweet plums to start this year plum wine, perhaps trip to Garsons farm is in order.

Allotment progress

In August we were finally blessed with some crops on our small allotment. Our tomatoes which were supposed to be in the hanging baskets fruited so much we are absolutely shocked. Already 1.75kg collected and it looks like we have another 3-4 kg to pick up.

Green Peas, despite initial problems with wood pigeons, after covering them with netting seems to have picked up and should give us nice crop.

Sweetcorn is a little disappointing and it looks like there won't be more than one or two cob per plant but we have 12 plants growing and it looks like they all will fruit.

Second crop of radishes looks allot more healthy than first one. June crop was plagued by too much moisture and radishes were all split and a bit crooked. This second lot looks promising and we have seeded them in weekly stages so there should be fresh radishes for next month or so.

Last year we have had some free sunflower seeds from our veg and fruit supplier, they turned out to be a real hit and sunflower plants are well on the way to provide big rich crop.

Nasturtium plant was initially attacked by aphids and we were considering getting rid of it after ants established real farming ground on it. However as they say patience is a virtue, Nasturtium is huge and now provides 30-50 edible flowers every week. They are sharp, peppery and great with humus on bread, on mushroom vegan pizza or in salads .

With our allotment we have inherited an apple tree, I was going to get rid of it but Dona convinced me to keep it for a year to see what kind of fruit it produce. We have not tried it yet but fruits are getting bigger every day and should be ready any day now, patience, patience...

Echinacea plant was with us for 3 years now, it has suffered attacks from slugs for most of its life, finally after moving it to the allotment it received another chance. In addition to looking very pretty it attracted many butterflies and bees to our plot so they deserve a special mention.

Simply bread

In many variations bread is a staple of human diet almost anywhere in the world. Below recipe is a base on which I have started experimenting with bread baking. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Preparation of sour, this needs to be done only once.

Mix 50g of flour (I use wholemeal but i think it can be any kind except bleached) with 50g of tepid water (best filtered or boiled) in a clean jar. After 24hrs you should noticed it slightly increased in size, scoop out 60g and discard it, add 30g of flour and 30g of water, repeat that procedure for a week. After a week you should have 100g of sour, it smells slightly acidic and has consistency of a very thick custard. From now on it should be kept in the fridge, every now and again it needs to be "fed" by adding water and flour, I usually feed my sour when I take some sour for my bread baking which is usually 2 times a week.

Step 1

Approximately 12 hours(I do it when I wake up in the morning) before planned bread making session put 40g of sour in a bowl and mix it with 50g of flour and 50g of water and cover with a plate, if it's kept in cold place, ie. below 15C allow up to 24 hours. After 12 hours mixture will double in size and you should have bubbly lively starter.

Step 2

200g white flour (organic, unbleached)
220g wholemeal flour (organic)
280g of water (g not ml)
6g of salt
140g of starter

Mix starter with water and flour with salt.

Pour water/starter mixture into flour and mix it well

Keep mixing it until it forms loose dough, scoop it out of the bowl on work surface.

There is no need to flour surface, dough should be wet and sticky with consistency of thick porridge.

Step 3

Start kneading the dough, there is so much advice of the net how to do it but really there is no need to get too scientific about it. I just slap the dough on the surface pull one side of it and fold it on top, at first it may be difficult to "fold" the dough as it will break and stick to your hand.

Do not worry about dough being to wet and keep kneading for about 10-15 mins, after that time dough will start stiffen up and gets more pliable and easier to work with. It will also stick to hand alot less.

Best advice about kneading I got was "when you think your dough is ready knead it for another 10 minutes". Keep kneading your dough and after another 10 minutes it should be relatively easy to form a dough ball. It will still be sticky and a bit wet but do not worry about it, it's perfectly normal.

Put dough in a bowl, cover and leave for 3 hours.

Step 4

Your dough should raise and almost double in size, in general if you add more white flour it will raise more.

Now flour work surface, take out dough out of the bowl and spread it on work surface.Try to scoop your dough as one piece and try not to "stretch" it too much, however even if you break it, don't worry it's still perfectly workable. 

Fold your dough in 1/3 and then over.

Press it down and try to squeeze any air bubbles out of the dough, keep spreading the dough and folding it up, if it starts sticking to the surface, flour it and keep folding about 10-15 times until it forms nice tight parcel.

For final proofing I use cane basket but before I had cane basket I used bread baking tin or bowl lined up with linen cloth. Simply put your dough parcel in profing basket/tin/bowl put it in plastic bag and leave it for about 2 hours. Alternatively put it in the fridge, it can stay in the fridge for 8 to 12 hrs.

Step 5

After about 2 hrs (or 8 hrs in the fridge) dough again should almost double in size. Pre heat your oven to about 220C, when using baking stone make sure that oven was heating the stone for at least 30 minutes.

I bake my bread on the terracotta baking stone, but it can be baked in baking tin or pizza tray. Eventually I recommend baking stone, crust from such bread is unbeatable. Tip your dough over on pre-heated baking stone and scare it couple of times, be careful with hot stone and use oven gloves for handling it! Scaring is purely for aesthetic reasons, bread will raise in the oven and scaring will force it to growth in particular fashion rather than breaking uncontrollably during baking.

Put your dough in the oven and spray some water inside the oven, humidity is necessary for crust to develop nice brown colour. After 15 minutes reduce temperature to 180C and bake for further 30 minutes. After baking is finished let it cool on airy tray for at least 30 minutes. You now have healthy, fresh, crumbly and awesomely yummy bread, best dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar, enjoy!

Winemaking stage 2

Smell of fermentation in the flat was getting more intense every day so today time has come to put both wines in demijohns. Firstly all equipment was thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.

I tried not to disturb fermenting must and carefully gather and squeeze most of fruits from top of fermenting buckets.

Remaining must was poured into demijohns through muslin bag and funnel. It is important not to rush this process and not to squeeze muslin bag, my plum wine from last year which was rushed through muslin bag, never really cleared and there is quite a bit of sediment in bottles.

Finally after couple of hours of dripping I have 2 demijohns of awesome looking Black and red currant wine. I will be racking it in about a month time.

Some observation:

Original recipe was incorrect, actual proportions for one gallon of wine should be 3.5l of water not 4.5l! I have way too much must left over and quite a bit of sugar wasted, may add about 100-200g of sugar after first racking in about a month time.

I am not sure whether this is effect of pectolase or type of fruit used this time but must was really clear with fruits very clearly separated. About 30 minutes after putting must in demijohn thin line of sediment formed on the bottom and it looked like it was almost ready for racking straight away, I have high hopes regarding clarity of this batch.

Transplanting Lavender

Transplanting works best when cuttings are treated with growth hormone. Since we are not using any chemicals and where possible trying to do everything ourselves, commercial growth hormone was out of the question. After a bit of reading I have learnt that you can prepare mixture which will work just as well as commercial growth hormone but its free and 100% organic.

Step one was to find a willow tree, luckily there was one growing beside the road just about 200 meters away from our home. I have taken about 10 cuttings, they should be new shots, still green not yet wooden.

Leaves and tips will go on compost heap.

Stripped shots were cut into inch long pieces and placed in heat resistant jar.

I have added boiling water in proportions 1:10

Mixture was left to stand for about 24 hrs. Next day general purpose organic compost was generously watered with essence from willow cuttings and placed in 6 small pots. We only have one small lavender plant in front garden but it was enough to take 6 cuttings. Cuts were about 5-6 inches long, stripped from the bottom creating about 2 inch stem. I have placed lavender cuttings in holes in prepared pots enriched with willow essence and pressed gently.

I will report in about a month with the progress.

Visit to Lavender Fields

Very educational and perhaps useful trip, we have learnt a great deal about growing lavender plants and distillation of lavender oil using simple still with Liebig condenser and clever oil separator. I am really excited about possibility of building small home still for distillation of essential oils, perhaps is a project for next winter.

First thing first, I have to build shed on our allotment. This is quite a big project and I am not very confident about it. Original plan was to build it entirely from old shipping pallets, unfortunately I have rather stupidly dismantled about 4 pallets when we just got the allotment and now I do not have enough of them for walls. Anyway I will try to put together floor and what I can it terms of walls and try to resource more pallets this week.

Big Cherry Tree

I have finally got around to cutting down old bugger with only hand saw. It was a long and painful process for us both, I started with branches at the bottom working my way up to the top of the tree. After stripping him from canopy I proceeded to reducing trunk to short stump. Word of advice for anyone attempting to cut down a tree that about 15 inches in diameter using hand saw - don't do it. It took me about half an hour, 20 breaks, a litre of water and in the end help from my wife to bring him on the ground. We both are actually surprised how much more sun our plot has now. 


All branches are piled up against residential fence and I will have to come up with solution what do with them. Options are burning them or hiring wood chipper and then slowly composting over the next few years. 


Now I have plenty of space to start building shed,  plan is to join 4 bottom pallets together tomorrow, level up the surface and position pallets in permanent spot. We are still gathering materials from Freecycle, Gumtree and Ebay but it looks like I will have to make a trip to B&Q and buy some new items.