While I was away in Cornwall a few weeks ago I picked some of the sweetest blackberries I've ever tasted from a bramble patch next to some building works. We cooked them with two windfalls we'd picked up from a National Trust orchard and enjoyed a wonderful dessert with fresh cream.

Everywhere I look elderberries are ripening and the hawthorn trees in my garden have produced the largest, ripest haws I've ever seen. Maybe it's something to do with the incessent gloom and rain which makes the trees think they need to bring some delight to our eyes!

Yesterday, I picked enough haws to fill four 2lb jars. Two will become hawthorn vinegar, one a brandy tincture and the other will become a new brandy liqueur, although I won't get to drink it for a couple of years! As I left for work this morning I asked my husband if he would mind getting the ladder out and picking some more haws so that I have plenty of extras for Christmas gifts and tasting sessions at workshops and talks.

If you want any recipes for haws, look at my hawthorn article on the HS website.

I've also made my first batch of nettle salt. The recipe comes from Rebecca Hartman. You put 4 parts of dried nettle seed to 1 part of sea salt in the coffee grinder and whizz until it's all ground and well mixed. I used it last night to flavour an avacado and an omlette I was making for tea and it was really tasty. It's a good way of reducing your salt intake and increasing support to your kidneys and adrenal glands.

What's everyone else harvesting?

Best wishes

Sarah

Funnily enough, I'm just in from a ramble around the hedgerows. After you commented about your ripe haws, Sarah, I took my lunch down to the river and guess what? The big hawthorn was just glowing with red berries. Amazing! I suppose it is September now but...
So, today I set off for the railway track and managed a bag full of hips and haws as well as some raspberry leaves. I think I'll do my haws in vodka this year to see if any of the applyness comes through (I felt the flavour of the brandy obscured it last year) but I'm also going to make the vinegar again - it was yum last year! As for the hips, I'm going to try the cold method for making syrup as I ended up with toffee last year.
One other thing I noticed though - no sloes and its not been that long since I've been down there that the birds could have had them all. Anyone else noticed the same?

Hi Claire

I haven't started hunting for hips yet - maybe next week! What's the cold method for syrup? You can't go wrong if you use Chris Hedley and Non Shaw's recipe - cover with water, decoct for 20 minutes, strain and clean out saucepan. Measure liquid, reduce by slow evaporation until 1/8 of the volume remains. Add sugar/honey in the ration 1 pint to 1lb. I've got a horehound/hyssup/marhsmallow leaf/licquorice syrup reducing on the stove as we speak.

I have nearly finished all my preservings. Tonight after work I put up another jar of hawthorn vinegar, a jar of sage vinegar, a horehound/hyssop elixir, a garden lettuce gone to seed tincture and put the syrup on. Tomorrow I have to decide what I want to do with my yarrow (probably a combination of tincture and oil, but not sure)and probably another jar of hawthorn vinegar. (Chris has significantly reduced the number of haws on the one tree!)Now I just need to gather some conkers before they ripen too much and I'll nearly be finished!

Best wishes

Sarah

Oooh I hadn't thought about conkers...

I tried the boiling method for rosehip syrup last year and managed to overboil it and got toffee. So this year I'm trying the method in Hedgerow Medicine - basically, I slit the skins and layered up with sugar in a jar. The juice in the fruit should melt the sugar down into a syrup. We'll see how it turns out...
I've done this with onions and garlic and ginger and lemon before and it worked well (although the lemon and ginger one was much tastier)

Hi, just been on a walk and loads of sloes in our hedgerows (In fact so many that the branches have been breaking in places and quite a few hips, although not so many elderberries, am looking for any other recipes for the sloes rather than Sloe Gin any ideas? (Am new to this so any suggestions greatfully recieved)
Kind regards
Sarah

Hi Sarah

I know that sloes are often referred to as wild plums, but no herbalist that I can find reference to actually talk about using either the blackthorn bark or fruit medicinally. The flowers can be used in a flower remedy Mrs Grieve refers to a close relative, the Bullace, as having a fruit with similar properties to the sloe and says that in France the bark was used as a febrifuge and sloe gin as a remedy for diarrhoea. Glennie Kindred also mentions using sloes for this purpose.

I've made sloe gin for several years and it is one of the few alcoholic drinks I enjoy. I suspect the sloe is so tart as to make it unpalatable, but you might try to make a jelly, perhaps adding apples or other plums and see what happens. Rowan berries are also exceptionally bitter, but make a useful jelly to those who enjoy the flavour.

I've just had a quick look on the web and it seems Waleeda make a Blackthorn elixir as a tonic made from sloe juice, cane sugar and lemon juice. Personally, if I want to make an elixir, I'd use honey and add some rosehips when cooking the sloes. You could add a few cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger and see how it tastes. If I get a moment next weekend, I might join you in some experiments.

Let us know how you get on and what you try.

Best wishes

Sarah

Just returned from York where I was manning an exhibition stall at York University. We stayed at the Naburn Lock caravan site which was surrounded by wonderful bushes full of rosehips. I even managed to gather some stray yarrow while I was forraging - it's times like this I really like travelling to foreign parts when I know I can't gather in my usual haunts. Rose petals from Northumberland and rosehips from Yorkshire!


Sarah

I agree, I came back from my holidays with elderflower vinegar from the tree in the garden of the Gite we stayed in. Agrimony flowers which I've tinctured, growing not far from the hotel we stayed in at Newcastle a few weeks ago, and raspberry vinegar from Calais (not growing wild but I did get an excellent price on the raspberries whilst in Calais last weekend) and anyone going to Volunteers Day this weekend will get to smell the results for themselves. There's something to harvesting from different locatrions, I can taste the warm summer sunshine in the elderflower vinegar, and I'm certain that the happy memories and the sunshine help the remedies work just a little better!

I like the idea of nettle salt, may give that a try, I've been experimenting with salt scrubs for the body using mandarins and spices ready for some upcoming Mercian Herb Group talks I'm giving and for a body pampering article I'm doing for the Members Area. I really need to get out and see if there are any elderberries left to make some more elderberry elixir, its either raining lately or I'm busy off on my travels. I have used lots of stuff from the garden though, making mostly herb sugars for baking, lemon verbena, lavender and rosemary, also lots of herb vinegars and tinctures. I made another batch of calendula tincture and used the same method as last year, it tasted so much better than the shop bought ones. Have made some rose petal tincture as well, using the William Shakespeare roses. Not hedgerow I know, but at least I've been doing some herbal stuff in amongst the chaos lol!

Debs

Sounds like you've been really busy! I'm really getting into forraging and have made some Sloe Gin, Apple Chilli Jelly. I've picked some Rose Hips for syrup and we have an abundance of Haws here in the South West. So many but I can't find any recipes for the vinegar you mention which sounds very unusual and yummy! How do you make it please and what do you use it for? Any other suggestions for using haws would be fab. If anyone esle has suggestions I'd be grateful. I think this weekend will see the best of them, they're on the turn.

Haw vinegar - dead simple - fill a jar with haws - top it up with apple cider vinegar - leave it a couple of weeks - drain and store. Well tasty - lovely in a salad dressing - nice in as a hot drink - teaspoon in hot water - add honey if you like...

There are still haws on the bushes in my garden. It was originally planted as a hedge when the houses were first built in 1957, but we've been lax about trimming the ones closest to the house and they've grown up into proper trees (much to my neighbour's annoyance!). The berries are so dark, they are almost black with just a reddish tinge.

I was toying with the idea of making a hawthorn/honey wafer on Sunday morning, but as there were some blackberries needing to be used up in the fridge, I went and picked haws and leaves and a couple of windfall apples from the garden. I made blackberry and apple for our evening meal and then used about 4ozs blackberries and the apple peel together with a cinnamon stick, 6 cloves, a handful of rosehips, an inch and a half of peeled and chopped root ginger and a grated nutmeg and threw them all in the saucepan with the haws and leaves. After covering them with water, I left them to simmer for about 40 minutes and then pushed them all through a seive. The liquid was very thin (I don't think my rosehips are very ripe as they take forever to soften!), so I reduced it by half over the next hour or so and then added about 3/4lb honey for the pint of liquid remaining.

It tasted great and was definitely a cordial rather than a syrup, needing diluting in hot water about half and half.

I've not used haws in anything purely culinary before, apart from the haw-sin sauce, so it's nice to know they do add to my drinks repertoire!

Sarah