First session of the year!

One of the best things we've ever got, buying a pasteurising boiler (other than a scratter, apple press, steam juice extractor, passata machine, etc.

It really is the key to being able to preserve loads of stuff. You can even preserve/bottle the likes of home made rhubarb leaf/garlic/elderberry insecticides/etc., or even beer for slug traps.

I always remember some friends erecting shelving for their massive homemade jam production, which collapsed, destroying everything apart from a single jar of shop bought lemon curd.

 

Picked another 44lbs 8ozs of Blackberries today (total now 286lbs 8ozs), tried getting Mrs Scrungee to go picking again this evening to break through the 300lbs barrier but she doesn't share my enthusiasm, so it will have to be tomorrow. The bushes are looking seriously depleted.

@Loofah are you catching up?

Well, before I located the prolific early patch I now pick from, we used to go dog walking at dawn every morning and strip every blackberry from every bush throughout the village, but after we heard various remarks about there being no blackberries anywhere to be found, we decided to let some others get in on the harvest.

 

Nice one, you better not come down here, as there is not any blackberries, dew to the hedge trimers

 

They have destroyed the hedgerow plum harvest for the last few years.

 

Yes, and here, they are falling on the ground and my dog keeps trying to eat them!!

Val

 

There's loads of blackberries between 3 and 7 minutes walk away, 2 of us normally work together, using a bucket hanging round your neck allows both hands to be used for picking almost doubling the speed (a wide necked container on the ground allows berries to be chucked in when hands are full) and try and go every day (although picking the same bush every 2 days is most efficient).

We've now got up to 305lbs 6ozs, all of which will have been juice extracted and bottled by this evening. That's enough juice to make sufficient Blackberry Wine for a bottle a day for the next year! But I wont stop until they slow down and diminishing returns get to the point where we'd be better spending our time doing something else. Pasteurised juice will last several years (I've got some that's 5 years old and still OK, in small bottles for topping up large ones so nothing's wasted) so it's reassuring to hold a stock.

Another 3 gallons or thereabouts of juice produced Sunday (and probably over 5 gallons today, but I'll sulphite it and delay pasteurisation until tomorrow).

 

Mrs Scrungee describes it a 'Robo' mode, you just need to use the time to think of other things, rather like when pricking out/potting up hundreds/thousands of young seedlings/plants.



I'm old enough to have seen that on TOTP in 1969.