In the doldrums good and proper . . .

You will have to forgive me the lack of posts, comments on other blogs etc - I seem to be properly "down in the dumps" at the moment.  All sorts of worries apart from the house selling and my brain is finding it hard to feel the least jot of positivity, although there ARE some positives out there, including with Keith's ongoing health problem, which I will just mention in passing rather than share with the world.

Anyway, here are three of my all time favourite books (Farmhouse Fare is the one I would take to a desert island with me!)  At harvest time I try and preserve as much of the fruit and veg grown here as possible, particularly the fruit, as we have so much of it.  In retrospect I am now relieved we weren't in a position to buy the house in Shropshire we fell in love with a while ago, as that had a serious orchard and you would have drowned in apples, pears and plums!

We picked 15 lbs of Damsons and left nearly as many on the tree which were damaged or out of reach.  The birds are delighted and really enjoying them, and I have had Blackbirds, Juvenile female Blackbirds, Black Caps, Robins and a positive ID of several Willow Warblers in the tree - feasting on fruit and insects on the fruit.  The WW's are a first for here.  They have probably been here all the time, but seeing them close up is a first for me. They seem to be the ones who have a particular call I have heard up and down our valley - not a song as such (though they obviously have a song) but a one note call.  Glad I have tracked them down.

This was the next stage of my Damson Cheese - which I've not made before.  It went through the jelly bag overnight and then got cooked up with sugar.  I knew it would set from about 10 minutes in, but you are meant to cook it slowly for an hour.  I gave it 35 minutes and then put it into sterilised jars. This will be wonderful with cold meats at Christmas.  The recipe said to use straight-sided jars.

I am about to go down and make some Apple and Damson Jelly, which has been in the jelly bag overnight.  That will make a few more jars than this.  I gave some Damsons and Windfall apples to my friend Nikki, who was delighted to get them.  She was pleased and I was relieved!  I've put the last couple of pounds of Damsons in the freezer, ready to make Damson Gin (when I have the Gin).  Three pounds from the freezer, left over from last year, have been put in the wine bucket to make Damson Wine.  I need to add the yeast to that this morning.

We had a "day out" this week when we went to view a property in Herefordshire which we'd been interested in, then came up as "Sold STC", and then I noticed it was back for sale again as it had obviously fallen through.  I had actually phoned the previous week and asked if it WAS going through and at that point it was - 2 days before exchange of contracts, it fell through.  The agent phoned me and said did we want to view, so nothing lost, we did.  Well, it had the view to end all views - just amazing - and the garden (with old orchard) and outbuildings was just what we were looking for but the house - emptied of furniture - looked very shabby and the rooms were a series of poorly-thought-out extensions around the original small cottage.  "Pokey" is the word I would use for a couple of the bedrooms but the deal-breaker was the very narrow staircase which you could barely get a chair up, let alone anything bigger.

Ah well, at least we had some Herefordshire air and scenery and know that should a miracle happen and our original buyer return, that one wouldn't do for us.