Ambling Repairs

After an orgy of selling leading up to Christmas, there has been a welcome 'Back to Basics' vibe at Gibson's Organic Liqueurs (a marketing guru told me I had to repeat as many key words as possible in my blogs, so brace yourself dear reader/s for repetition - organic fruit liqueurs cotswolds organic fruit liqueurs cotswolds). I had almost forgotten what the fields look like with the focus on marketing and recipe experiments - coming soon, redcurrant, white currant with elderflower and sloe whiskey liqueurs.

Still Life feat. liqueurs at various stages of readiness

A solid diet of rain and snow had also contributed to exile from the fields, though on occasion provided opportunity for some team building exercises with staff. 

Here sporting the 'proud King face' on completion of the snowman task

With the land now thawed however, and even some sun, I've been able to get back out there and give some tlc to the plants.  

First up the trees in the windbreak whose guards have split

Specimen A from the 'Bodge job' manual

I've also given all the currants a good prune, having been too soft hearted in previous years.  The idea being that the bushes should now produce less fruit but of greater size and quality.

The pruned waiting to meet a fiery end.  Just missing a witch for the summit; perhaps the local enviro health officer could sub in ('little bit of politics', though I suspect Elton, B would be on the side of the EHOs)

The latest troublemaking fauna (previous criminals incl. deer, hares, earwigs and ants) are moles.  I cannot suffer one of these critters to die, so have decided to try and work in harmony with them.  They do spew up a lovely bit of topsoil and I've stuck a few currant cuttings in them and will see what happens - most likely nothing but an amused labor of moles.

with shepel and armchair of contemplation in the background

The junior member of the team also came up with the idea of making a mole house from blackcurrant prunings - the dwelling so far remains unoccupied.

An axis of weeds and grasses have taken advantage of my extended absence to get their groove on

Displeasing!

 These creeps are looking to overrun the mulch mat completely, invading from both sides

but are fairly easy to deal with

competitors that get in right at the base of the bush, like this dandelion, are more belligerent

The schedule of works for the rest of Feb and March is a full one.  To adapt a clarion call of our local MP - LETS GET BRITAIN WEEDING!

A late winter panorama to sign off with

oh and

cotswolds organic fruit liqueurs cotswolds organic fruit liqueurs cotswolds organic fruit liqueurs

cotswolds organic fruit liqueurs cotswolds organic fruit liqueurs cotswolds organic fruit liqueurs
:) :) :) :)

Picking, Pressing and Prizes!

The blackcurrants ripened very late this year, which meant our first Wwoof-er of the summer had to tread water weeding, while the cassis took their own sweet time to swell sufficiently.

Heuresement Justine, from an engineering college in Bordeaux, was a very cheerful and hard working etoile. Below we see her setting about a particularly unkempt raspberry row.

And apres

Meanwhile the more experienced farm workers were left to operate the heavy machinery

Gibson's Organic now has a regular pitch at Deddington Farmers Market (4th Saturday of every month) and a glamorous part-time sales and marketing manager, Roz, (full-time glam, part-time worker).  Her mini Eton messes drizzled in raspberry liqueur went down a storm with the public as does her general bonhomie.

Eventually the blackcurrants, taking pity on Justine's la vie en weeds, were ready to pick and two more tres sympa undergrads also from Bordeaux - Audrey and Florine arrived to help.

It wasn't long before there were enough picked, 60kg, to do the first pressing of the season and start the 2012 vintage of blackcurrant liqueur.

                                         Pulp left after pressing

I always remember my childhood hero 'King' Kenny Dalglish response on winning Shoot Annual's Goal of the Season - 'it's nice to win awards, I've won them in the past, the thing to remember is keep your feet on the ground'.  It is with these words in mind, and with a groundedness befitting a farming enterprise, that I must report a series of recent accolades for Gibson's Organic Liqueurs.  At the end of July we heard that we had won a Great Taste Award gold for the blackcurrant liqueur, and both the raspberry and the blackcurrant have been commended at another prestigious food and drinks award, though I am not allowed to reveal which one until September...!!  This month we also heard that we have been awarded a scholarship to Jamie Oliver's Big Feastival Sept 1st-2nd as a 'homegrown hero'.  In the parlance of the less modest breed of contemporary footballer - GET IN!

Returning to terra firma, below are the first precocious raspberries of the autumn crop - the real stars of the show.

BUDY MARVELLOUS!

..but first the close of winter

A romantic Jan. afternoon with the shepel

Finishing the planting of the raspberries after the thaw:

Last year's rasps also needed to be pruned right down to the ground.  This year a cutting disk was attached to the strimmer and I got through it in no time compared to previous years when I'd cut each cane by hand.

Before

                                                                       
                                                                           After



The canes burn up something lovely

Now re. that budding: I know there's some story about woman coming from Adam's rib or whatever but if I were to chop off my finger and stick it in the ground I don't fancy the chances of a son and heir springing forth a few weeks later.  I am still staggered by the ability of currant bushes to reproduce themselves in this way.



These shoots were snipped off their mother plants and pressed into the hard earth barely 2 months ago and have had to endure their matting being repeatedly blown off, severe frosts, very little rain and yet regard the life force of these delicates!

And at closer quarters: the fine order of the buds burst into leaf, progressing from top down.  This is the moment for me, whatever happens next feels almost unimportant....I'll keep you posted however!

AUTUMN-WINTER

Lord: it is time.  The summer was immense
Lay your shoulders on the sundials
And let loose the wind in the fields.
Bid the last fruits to be full,
Press them to ripeness and chase
The last sweetness into the heavy wine.

I pinned this bit of Rilke to the shepel wall in late Nov. with fresh raspberries still in my mouth.  I've never known them last as long.  It means that jobs that are usually consecutive and with a decent interval between: picking fruit, planting for future seasons, were carried out side by side.

I rotavated out 3 new rows for currants and extended the rows of the top plot raspberries.

I hire the rotavator once a year.  It makes a much better bed than the small plough I tried once, even if after a day of milling through Cotswold brash I feel like I've been working a pneumatic drill in thick concrete.

Austerity Britain has delivered the project a talented local wwoof-er!  Above Alice models a post planting glow on completing the extension to an existing raspberry row.  These canes have been transplanted from the lanes between the old rows where they were allowed to spring up.

Other autumn-winter jobs have been running repairs, here a hessian bandage for one of the newer trees in the eastern windbreak.

As much as I would have liked to spend more time in the field over the last couple of months, most of the action has been in the winery and the marketplace.

Ding Dong Merrily!  Finally a batch of a finished product, which is rapidly flying out of the cellar, through markets:

and shops:

Shoulder to shoulder with the big boys!

Meanwhile re. that wind loosed in the field, the matting I'd laid over the new currant rows didn't survive the early Dec. gales too well.

Still and mild days recently however have given opportunity for restoration and a bit more planting. 

Below replacing the white currants that didn't survive in the currant tricolore row, next to the shepel.

Christmas - Dickens - Child labour: 3 easy steps

And finally the shepel got a pair of pear trees for Crimbo

much ado..

and time passed since my last entry, testament to how busy things have been and how much has happened in between: the summer has gone and returned, all the blackcurrants have been harvested, the raspberries are thoroughly weeded in preparation for thier big ripening through late summer and early autumn, the shepel has been anointed with its first coat of wood preserver for the year, and recipe experiments in the winery continue late into the night, my thickening moonshine beard dripping with fruity booze.

The blackcurants were weeks early this year and the raspberries look like following suit.  A lot of fruit has set and increasing numbers are ripening.  I try to schedule a holiday between the end of the currants and beginning of the rasps but Mother Nature doesn't always respect my A/L entitlement.

I can't complain however when such miracles are wrought as the recovery of these raspberry transplants that looked so mis in May.

The other bonus is that there are not quite enough ripe ones yet to make me feel I should pick them commercially, so they must all be eaten!  Like the camel herder who drinks nothing but his animals' milk and claims superhuman strength from it, apart from my Oatabix in the morning I ate nothing but rasps the whole of yesterday, bedouin chanting down the lanes as I filled my mouth with them.

Remember the wild plum tree's blossom.

The Massey and me have also been a mowing -

CSI

or 'How I blow my load' (Apprentice Natasha 2011)

This is the raspberry blood aftermarth of my first 'racking off' - the transferring of the wine 'must' from one vessel to another using a pump which at the same time passes it through filter sheets.  The pump is the silver cylinder, the filter which holds six filter sheets is the other side of the gauge.  I racked off the wine before it was fully fermented out into a vessel in which a mix of neat alcohol and sugary water was waiting.  This blending is to get the wine up to liqueur strength.  My mind is full of recipes and formulas in thought bubbles over my head as I plot in the shepel - different proportions of raspberries, syrup (sugar + water) and neat alcohol.  How many grammes of sugar per litre is desirable?  What acidity?  What volume of liquid is created by what weight of sugar once it is dissolved?  (about 0.6 litres from 1kg of sugar FYI). 

The next step is to send it off for analysis to determine the exact alcohol strength and to do some fine tuning based on tasting.

Meanwhile in the field it's all kicking off.  The dry spring means that the first variety of blackcurrants (there are 5) have ripened prematurely, three weeks earlier than last year!

I chide them camply as I monitor their progress, 'oo you're a bit previous', but am concerned at not having the requisite picking power to cope.  I am grateful for Laetitia the new Wwoof-er charmante but a rate of 8kg a day in the bucket will not get the job done in time.

These bushes and the ones above are exactly the same variety of blackcurrant.  Extraordinary to see how differently they have grown in the different locations and with different mulch matting - one lot collapsing with good health; the others balding, skinny survivors.

Horticultural porn!  Howdya like them currants?

A Magritte still-life, to illustrate actual size of currant and to record progress of finger since fracture Friday. 

A storming recovery by the frost ravaged baby raspberries who featured so miserably last month!



May is the cruellest month

The raspberry runners that I parsimoniously transplanted from the lanes into the rows a few months ago were looking in fine fettle despite drought conditions until they were scorched by a late frost.  I hope they have enough going on beneath the surface to come again.

More recently wild winds have been the dominant force.  I cannot think  of any climatic condition less becoming to the field - a wrecking ball through its pastoral and interior qualities.  It's also meant that what little moisture the rain has donated has been swiftly eroded and the larger bushes and trees that are now in leaf have struggled to cope with wind speeds more typical of the winter months when their bare branches wisely offer less resistance.

The winery has provided sanctuary and with my warehouse approval promised to be imminent, I've started my first commercial size batch of wine.

I defrosted 40kg of raspberries from last years harvest..

 ..then scooped them into the hydro press.

The press is a rubber belly inside a perforated steel cylinder.  The fruit is put in between the belly and the cylinder and then the belly is slowly filled with water.

As the belly expands the fruit is pressed against the cylinder which also has a more finely perforated hessian sack placed within it.  The juice then flows out and is collected in buckets and then transferred to a fresh barrel.

The potter's wheel - the cake of squashed raspberry left after pressing.

To the juice is added organic Brazilian cane sugar diluted in water up to the neck of the 100 litre (hectolitre) plastic barrel.

24 hours after adding the yeast not much was happening but after a good stir, it was soon bubbling away.  In fact aping the chaotic conditions outside by frothing over the air lock, prompting some equally deranged cries of "Frying tonight!" from me as I manically took remedial action into the early hours of this morning.

The must now seems to have settled into a steady bubble.

  The cap is not at a deliberately jaunty angle, this is a work in progress! Without a moving image the slow and steady piston motion of the air lock lid as it rises and falls with the fermentation cannot be appreciated, but it is a rather soothing to contemplate and contrast with all the blustering going on outside.