Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Chatting => Frugal Living => Topic started by: David. on September 12, 2007, 18:36
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A comment elsewhere on this forum about some damsons being more expensive than others gave me a bit of a shock - does anyone actually buy them when you can pick from the hedges for free?
I keep a list of what we have picked/gleaned, which to date is:
Elderflower heads (for elderflower cordial) almost 600.
Elderberries only 10 lbs (because we picked nearly all the flowers!).
Cherries (wild & sweet) 21 lbs.
Bullace 220 lbs.
Blackberries 155 lbs (and lots more to come).
Damsons 14lbs (+ found some more to pick).
Greenages (growing wild) 13 lbs (getting some more tommorow).
We have gathered/been donated 325 lbs of free windfall apples & 38 lbs of windfall pears (and hopefully lots more to come) and got 15 lbs of morello cherries from a neighbour.
We are also gathering hazelnuts, had some puffballs, and will be picking wild walnuts, crab apples (had 225 lbs last year) and sloes late on.
A lot easier than tending our 2 apple & 1 pear tree, raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, strawberries and blackcurrants.
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how do you store so much :shock: fruit :shock: and what do you make with it all
that must be a full time job
cheers
jr
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Is that so far, this life time?
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how do you store so much :shock: fruit :shock: and what do you make with it all
that must be a full time job
cheers
jr
Cherry, damsons & greengauges - Jam
Some bullace in chutney.
Puffballs - soup (excess frozen).
Apples & Pears - pressed juice for pure juice, cider & apple wine.
Nuts - biscuits
Remainder of fruit - some cordials, but mainly wine.
Probably better off working and buying everthing from a supermarket, but I've retired and regard it as 'leisure'.
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No way are you better off buying it from the supermarket What you are doing is great Well done All free you know exactly what's gone into it couldn't be better
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just take a drive down any road in the uk and im sure you will find " food for free " by richard mayberry ....... like wot i do :wink:
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What a brilliant idea! I've never "picked for free" myself but I just might have to give it a go. I do think it's very sad when you see a tree full of lovely apples or pears over someones fence and the ground is littered with rotting fruit. Maybe I'll just knock on their door and offer a free clean up for them lol
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What a brilliant idea! I've never "picked for free" myself but I just might have to give it a go. I do think it's very sad when you see a tree full of lovely apples or pears over someones fence and the ground is littered with rotting fruit. Maybe I'll just knock on their door and offer a free clean up for them lol
that works as well ...... specially with fig tree full of fruit and it just falling and rotting :wink:
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Such a rubbish year on my plot this year, that I've had better crops from the hedges, but as soon as I can get some more fruit out of my freezers, it's time to go sea fishing again (and have a welcome break from apple pressing).
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Such a rubbish year on my plot this year, that I've had better crops from the hedges, but as soon as I can get some more fruit out of my freezers, it's time to go sea fishing again (and have a welcome break from apple pressing).
me and you both sea fishing lol
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4 nights at West Bay, Dorset next week, with some good early morning tides for mackerel off Chesil towards the end of the week (with a head & guts lobbed out on another rod for bass), float fishing for gars, spinning somewhere quiet of an evening, there could be a freezer crisis on my return. Probably take the prawn nets aswell. I also know a few locations with apples growing wild and hope to bring them back if they haven't been picked already.
Next trip West Somerset.
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4 nights at West Bay, Dorset next week, with some good early morning tides for mackerel off Chesil towards the end of the week (with a head & guts lobbed out on another rod for bass), float fishing for gars, spinning somewhere quiet of an evening, there could be a freezer crisis on my return. Probably take the prawn nets aswell. I also know a few locations with apples growing wild and hope to bring them back if they haven't been picked already.
Next trip West Somerset.
oh shurrup ,,, i will not get jelos :lol: :lol: :lol:
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good luck with the fishing david
also theres lots of mushrooms in the fields right now :wink:
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theres lots of mushrooms in the fields right now
Not where I used to pick them, the farmer has ploughed up the pasture and planted maize this year.
However, there were some puffballs around earlier (in a couple of fairly open areas of horse cheshnuts where they appear every year), in fact much earlier than usual, appearing in early August and if there's some rain I'm hoping for some more.
Got up to 180 lbs of blackberries today, picked the first ripe sloes, found some more elderberries and the first ripe ('windfall') crab apples.
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180lbs!! How many arms have you got?
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I meant that my total to date this year is now 180 lbs, but when picking I hang a small bucket around my neck so I can use both hands.
Going to stop at 200 lbs or it will be blackberry time again next year before I've turned them all into wine.
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I did plum and blackberry wine ONCE! The ceiling and walls are still marked from the explosions!
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I put an advert on my local freecycle site asking if anyone had any fruit growing that they neither wanted or needed, I offered to pick and collect it (and to gather any bruised fruit that was rotting on their lawn for them) Didn't expect to much of a response but I've been swamped!! Not sure if I'll have time to collect it all now lol but the thought of all that lovely homemade chutney ..................... I'll manage somehow.
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I put an advert on my local freecycle site asking if anyone had any fruit growing that they neither wanted or needed, I offered to pick and collect it (and to gather any bruised fruit that was rotting on their lawn for them)
That's what I'm about to do for windfall apples (despite now having windfalls/excess from 2 small orchards).
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Here where we live in Spain people are really into food for free. After it rains (or sometimes while it is still raining) you see people out with carrier bags picking snails off the tall weeds at the roadsides - the snails all climb up what seems like the spindliest weeds and you see them clinging on for dear life as they re blown by the wind. Wild asparagus and wild young garlic shoots are also picked spring and autumn. We are surrounded by orange groves and apparently the law is that if the grove is unfenced you can help yourself to a few each day just for personal consumption. The various varieties of orange and mandarins ripen at different times so it is possible to pick fruit from late October up to June the next year.
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Here where we live in Spain people are really into food for free. After it rains (or sometimes while it is still raining) you see people out with carrier bags picking snails off the tall weeds at the roadsides - the snails all climb up what seems like the spindliest weeds and you see them clinging on for dear life as they re blown by the wind. Wild asparagus and wild young garlic shoots are also picked spring and autumn. We are surrounded by orange groves and apparently the law is that if the grove is unfenced you can help yourself to a few each day just for personal consumption. The various varieties of orange and mandarins ripen at different times so it is possible to pick fruit from late October up to June the next year.
doing ya best to make me jelos aint ya mrs :shock: :wink:
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I've just picked/pressed enough cooking apple windfalls up from the Parish Council's planting scheme on the village recreation ground to make 2.5 galls of 6% ABV cider.
Going to add a little sugar before fermenting to 7.5% ABV and call it "Wreck Creation" cider.
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Nice name David, can your next creation be called "Blaargh........wot u looking at?"
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Hows this for food for free - it even comes delivered to your door:
(http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s197/dawninspain/DSCN3771001.jpg)
(http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s197/dawninspain/DSCN3772001.jpg)
In the 1980s we lived in East London and had Epping Forest literally at the end of our road. In the summer farmers had the right to put their cattle out to graze wherever they liked in the forest and would turn them out in the spring and round them up in the autumn. If the summer was hot and the vegetation had dried up in the forest the cows would wander down the roads eating the plants in the gardens! Many a traffic jam was caused by cattle on the roads.
When we lived there we probably got more food for free than anywhere else we have lived. There were loads of blackberries, puffballs and other mushrooms, crab apples and damsons, hawthorns (for hawthorn jelly - a lot of work but wonderful jelly), elderflowers and elderberries, sloes for sloe gin etc etc.
The downside was that a good summer also brought out a good crop of flashers in the bushes and by the time we moved away it was too dangerous to walk on the common and in the forest by yourself even with a dog.
A brillant book is by Gail Duff - The Countryside Cookbook. Out of print I think but available used. She takes you through the seasons telling you what to look out for and there are some very good recipes.
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I lived in a (rented) farmhouse myself until shortly before I met my wife (who comes from a farming family) and know what's it like to have a herd of bullocks go through the garden.