We’re posting the recipes for all these things below, just in case anyone else is in the same situation…

Blackcurrant Jam

This jam is simple and delicious (we know because we already ate a whole jar!). Currants are a great fruit to make jam with because they’re high in pectin – especially when just under-ripe, though ours weren’t – so they set without adding any other fruits.  This recipe is from the River Cottage Handbook of Preserves.

We used

1.5 kg of blackcurrants, without twigs or stalks (though the shrivelled bit left from the flower can stay)

2,250 kg of sugar

900 ml of water

Put the currants with the water in a pan and place over a low heat to bring to simmering point. Leave for 15-20 mins (the fruit should be soft but not totally disintegrated), then add the sugar and stir until it has dissolved. Then, bring to a full rolling boil and maintain it for 5 minutes while stirring.

Remove from the heat and continue stirring gently for a couple of minutes to cool. You’ll know if the jam is ready by testing for the setting point. When it is done decant into sterilised jars – from our currants we got (more or less) six:

Jam!

Bottled Blackcurrants

This is a great way to preserve the little delicious black balls themselves. This project was also a way to test out using the solar cooker and oven to sterilise jars, which was definitely the most work-intensive part! To sterilise jars we boiled water in the solar cooker (at about 88 degrees centigrade) and filled up the jars, which we then left in the solar oven for some twenty minutes.

Jam jars sterilising in the solar oven, with the screw tops in hot water

We needed:

1,750 kg blackcurrants

1,2 l water

450 g sugar

a few lemon verbena leaves from the garden

The actual bottling involved cleaning the blackcurrants and packing them into the jars, with a few verbena leaves layered in each. Then, we added the syrup we made from the sugar and water – it should be at 60 degrees. We closed the jars without tightening the lids much and put them in a deep pan with a tea towel at the bottom filled with warm (38 C) water up to the jar necks. The point of this step is to create a vacuum inside the jars  by slowly heating the water to simmering point (88C again) and letting it boil for just a couple of minutes before removing the bottles and tightening the lids. After a day or so, they should be properly sealed and last for about a year… Fingers crossed.

Adding hot syrup to the jars

To be continued due to low solar power…

Hedvig & Sara

Giles.

In the box

Getting out

When the dawn lies still over the hills around here and the sun beginns to warm the plants, then it seams as if heaven would kiss the earth awake. Magic moments of totale silence and amazing abundance.

Inga (wwoofer)

Welcoming the chicks in to their new home

Baby Chick

Unfortunately something got in to their pen and took one last night so we are down to 4, but Matt is currently securing the enclosure so it won’t get seconds.

The pool will also be available for guests and volunteers to use – we’ll be asking for a contribution of 5 euros per week towards the costs of (eco friendly) pool maintenance.

Next step is to plant pretty flowers around the pool and try to disguise it’s ugly plastic-ness …

Wwoofer Aaron has cleared some of the weeds from beds in ‘the hot end’ of my garden, and yesterday we bought lots of pepper, aubergine and piri-piri plants at market to be transplanted through the thick layer of horse manure.

Lettuces are amazing this year, thanks to the incrfedible amount of rain that has poured into the ground. We grow lettuces all through the winter, outside, but they all tend to reach readiness at the same time, regardless of how much we stagger the plantings! So we have been giving away lettuces and the chickens have to get a taste for them.

I also planted a whole bed of Hopi Indian blue corn with trail of tears cherokee climbing beans and a long thin bed of sunflowers, over the weekend.

The summer glut of food from the garden feels like its about to start – the first courgette flowers are starting to open and some of the redcurrants are ripe, while some tomato plants are also flowering.

A solar drier is on our list of jobs, to be done before we need to start drying for the winter.

We need to strim all the brambles that have appeared over the winter, and many of the pathways that we use, but we try to wait until after the wildflowers have seeded, guaranteeing the bloom of colour again next year.

The bees have been returning to their hives completely covered in bright orange pollen from the marigolds – another good reason to leave clearing them for a few weeks.

Horse Riding at Quinta da Pombal

You can also go horse riding in the country side here which is an AMAZING way to see it in my experience.  You can ride for hours and only see a local villager tending to their goats, no other horses or people and you don’t have to go on any roads…the public tracks go everywhere.  I am so lucky!

Beautiful French Cart Horse at the stables where we go riding -he is HUGE

Little Ladies who Lunch at the quinta

Painting Fun

We have also started to go to Carregal do Sal to a lovely swimming pool on Wednesday afternoons if anyone wants to join us contact me for details.  We might have to change our name from Little Ladies though…as we now have Luca (a month old) who is joining us and another little boy who has just moved to the area with his parents!