champagne superthrifty

It's been a hectic week work-wise, so have had little time to keep up to date with blogging. The garden produce is really starting to come in thick and fast and we have harvested something for our evening meal every day this week. We've enjoyed side salads made up of our various green leaves, our spinach has been used in porcini mushroom risotto, baked gnocchi and chicken curry, we've snacked on the first strawberries and later I will be using our first courgettes to make some delicious pakoras.

Today marks the start of our community Ecoweek and this afternoon we went along to the allotment open day to have a nose at what people were growing and pick up some tips. We have been on the waiting list for an allotment since we moved here last July, and are not too hopeful of getting one any time soon, which is disappointing as the allotments are about a minute's walk from our cottage.


Cue much excitement when I got chatting to two lovely ladies up at the allotments who ended up offering to share their enormous allotment with us, until we are allotted one of our own! They've only just been given it themselves, and it's heavily overgrown, but they've marked us off a sizable space down the end to use as we so wish! Once we've dug up the weeds and grass I'm not really sure what to do with it, as it's too late for sowing seeds really- I'm going to look into ordering a job-lot of vegetable plug plants from somewhere and I fancy using a decent strip as a cutting garden too.


This afternoon, Flora and I gathered a big bag of elderflowers and set about making our first batch of elderflower champagne. It's now upstairs in our bedroom, hopefully fermenting nicely, ready for us to bottle it in a few days' time.


I've been collecting wine bottles from friends and neighbours to contain our home brew and I've bought some swing-top stoppers to cork it.


My father used to make elderflower champagne when I was a child and I'm told that his own version was used to toast my Christening, so I do hope ours turns out as well as his!

If you're at a loose end tomorrow, don't forget it's Open Farm Sunday where working farms all over the UK are opening their doors for fresh air and fun, as well as a chance to see where our food comes from. We're off to Pennyhooks Farm which is promising loads of country pursuits with the added bonus of a craft fair.

I must go because I'm running out of time to finish off some more gift socks!