the produce of our estate

[kareina]

While this year is not a very good berry year compared to others I have seen since we bought this house, still I have been eating smultron (wild strawberry) daily since getting back from the Medieval days at Hägnan event in July, strawberries since a week or so later, the red currants came ripe this weekend while I was in Norway, but there were still enough left by the birds for me to freeze an ice cream box full of them, the raspberries are starting to ripen, and the black currants are getting close. (Ok, I picked enough black currant to make a small batch of jam yesterday, even though they aren't all ripe yet, as we were totally out of last year's jam, and I love that stuff--I make it by boiling fruit without any additional sugar, and it is nice and tart).

I have been eating fresh nettles all summer, and the kale and silverbeet I planted has been feeding me daily. I am also finally starting to dry nettles again--we ran out of last year's dried nettles early this spring, right after the fresh ones started growing. Since we have done so much major landscaping projects we have plenty of areas which were taken down to bare dirt which have new, tiny nettles growing in, so I am harvesting them--kind of like spring nettles, but they are available now, when I have a bit more time for harvesting than I did in the spring.