vintage steam juicer

the rhubarb is going a little crazy in my garden. i took this photo today after i picked about ten kilos. and you can't even tell i've picked any. i believe i can safely tell you that horse poo is a fantastic fertilizer. i've been making a couple of rhubarb crumbles a week and i've made a couple of batches of cordial (rhubarb and ginger). it's such a gorgeous salmony pink and so refreshingly tart - we definitely want to lay in a supply of it for next winter.

today, i decided to try this wonderful vintage juicer that husband got me for christmas. it works on a steam principle. you place water in the bottom pan. in the top one, which is a strainer, you place your fruit and your sugar, then you let it boil and it steams all of the goodness from the fruit into the middle plan at the same time as it cooks the juice with your sugar, so you can decant the hot liquid directly into your prepared bottles. quite ingenius. i got 3 liters of rhubarb-vanilla juice today and had quite a lot of fun playing with it.  it's more a juice than a cordial and i'm not sure how long it's going to keep, as i think it maybe should have had a bit more sugar than the directions said. i actually have the original little folder of directions and i followed them this first time, to get a feel for it.

i think that next time, will add more sugar and make it more like my other cordials. it's a great method and it enables you to get more out of your fruit than you can get just cooking it up and straining it through a sieve with cheesecloth. i think i got nearly a liter more of juice doing it this way - and that's pretty significant!

can't wait to try it on the elderflowers. i suspect it's going to distill them very nicely!

strawberries & rhubarb

when you have a new place, it's always an adventure to see what's coming up around the garden, planted there by those who came before. last year, when we arrived, we saw that there were loads of strawberries. and we heard from neighbors that those who lived here before had actually sold strawberries. we weren't so interested in doing that, but we were interested in saving some of the shoots that the strawberries send out and thereby getting new (and free) strawberry plants. so last year, that was pretty much the extent of our efforts. we cleared a long row and tucked those little shoots into small plastic pots that we embedded into the sandy soil. now it's time to move all of those new little plants with their fine roots over to a new bed. and so we did that this week.

we prepared a bed, taking as many of the weed roots out as possible and turning in lots of horse poo (tho' not too much, because it is rich and can actually burn your plants). we have extremely sandy soil, which makes for great drainage, but isn't the most nutrient-rich soil, so fertilizing is important. we laid down a sheet of black fiber to try to help against the weeds (we have persistent crab grass), then cut holes in for the strawberries and moved the little plants (my hands were dirty and i failed to photograph this part). as you can see, we've stretched a plastic tunnel across it, hoping to both protect from the chilly nights that are yet to come (tho' strawberries can actually tolerate quite a lot of cold) and hoping to hurry them up a little bit - hopefully by a couple of weeks! we have another even longer bed that's not covered, so it's an experiment in seeing whether the tunnel helps and how much.

rhubarb hiding in the grass

while we were at it, we decided to move some of the rhubarb that were here when we bought the place, over to a more suitable place near the other edible perennials (like asparagus).  i thought last summer when we arrived that there were 12 rhubarb plants, but it proved there were far more, especially as we we were able to separate some obviously very old roots.

ancient, well-established rhubarb root

seeing these old and very established roots was somehow so satisfying. i felt a little bit like i was next in a long historical line. weird, how seeing a root provoked that feeling in me. a very base and primordial feeling of being very close to the earth. wonderful.

row 1 of the rhubarb (and husband with his precise lines)

and now there are two rows of rhubarb next to a long row of asparagus. they'll no doubt be quite relieved not to have to compete with all that grass anymore. tho' they'll probably be a bit shocked by their move, rhubarb is extremely hardy and  will undoubtedly come back very quickly.

and that's what happened in our sustainable life this week.