Sallygardens Smallholding

Country Wine, Chateaux Sallygardens

Wine making is something I've wanted to try for years and now that we grow the majority of our own food at home one of the biggest expenses on our tiny food bill is alcohol. The timing for having a go at this craft is perfect. It will reduce our expenses, utilise locally grown wild plants and cut down on all those air miles and energy that go into producing commercial wine. Of course, I'll still enjoy the odd bottle of Cabernet-Shiraz, St Emilion or Chateauxneuf Du Pape! The question is will our home brewed wine taste nice enough to replace our weekly bottle of bought red wine or will friends throw their eyes to heaven as we produce our dreaded liquid offering at dinner parties.  Time will tell.

I ordered a few glass demijohns, yeast and yeast nutrient  from The Homebrew Centre in Co Clare, who deliver nationwide and provide good advice if you seek it. Our wine won't be made from grapes, well at least not until the grape vines in the polytunnel are a few years old. I'm a believer in utilising what we find in our home environment and in this case we've decided to harvest a variety of seasonal flowers and berries from the surrounding fields to make our wines. There's a whole range of possible plant parts you can use to give flavour and colour to wine; dandelion, gorse, rose and elder flowers, blackberry and elderberry, even nettles, rose hips or birch tree sap can all be tried. During the summer there's usually at least one thing mother nature has on offer that you can pop into a brew. You can even try leaving out packet yeast, in the hope that wild yeasts will be there to do the business instead.

Our first attempt is a joint family effort. Dan and the children all picked a bucket full of dandelion blossom one sunny afternoon. A demijohn holds a gallon of liquid (4.5 litres) and you need to collect the same volume in blossom (berry or leaf). Place the blossom in a large pot and pour in a gallon of boiled water. Push the contents down into the water with a wooden spoon so nothing is floating dry on top. Leave the mixture to cool down to the temperature recommended on your particular packet of yeast (different strains of yeast flourish at different temperatures). Scoop out the flowers, squeezing them to release all the fluid. Enjoy the sweet aroma as you do this.

Stir in a 1.8 kilos of organic sugar, the juice of 4 lemons and a spoon of yeast nutrient. Stir well and then sprinkle the yeast on top of the liquid. After fifteen minutes stir the yeast down into the mixture. Pour the mixture through a sieve on a funnel and into the sterilised demijohn. Seal it with an air filter. As the yeast consumes the sugar and coverts it to alcohol, gas bubbles of carbon dioxide will exit through the water in the air filter. Once the yeast has stopped (a few months, depending on weather temperature) siphon off the mixture into wine bottles, leaving any sediment behind in the demijohn. Label the bottles, wait a few months or a year if you can bear it ... then drink at leisure.

I shall let you know how we rate our wine in a few months time.

Divine Salami

A couple of months ago we began processing the meat from the two most recent weaners we raised for the table. Some of it went into Ox Runners (large intestine casings) to make our very first salami. We experimented with three recipes; plain, garlic and last but not least peppercorn, garlic & port. I was glad we had the comfort of our book which reassured us that the growth of white, blue and green furry mould was perfectly normal and indeed a very good sign.  We decided against using the preservative salpetre which keeps the meat artificially pink but also reduces the risk of botulism in air dried meats. It's something to read up on and to consider carefully before you embark on processing your own pork. Time ticked on and the salami hung tantalisingly in the wood shed to air dry.

Regular groping of the salami gives a crude indication as to when they're ready to sample. Finally, eight weeks later, the time had come to cut down the first salami. Before sampling the bounty the mould is wiped off with kitchen towel and the salami rolled in wood ash. And the moment we waited for .... sheer bliss.

Interactive Food Map of Ireland

Paul O Mahony of Siopa Eile has launched the Interactive Food Map of Ireland. It's a brilliant idea for both producers and consumers. If you wish to locate an artisan made food product zoom into the area in question and click on the pointers to read contact information and product descriptions. Anybody can add or amend information on the map so if you are a producer go ahead and add your details, or if you know of a producer who isn't on the map please and add them. The success of the map depends on it's users adding information so don't be shy, jump in and help to make it a fantastic resource ... and don't worry you can't break it either!

What better way could there possibly be to start International Downshifting Week than to support a local food artisan in your area.

Spread the word. If you're an Irish blogger add the badge.

Making Cheese

This summer I really want to try my hand at cheese making. Last year I made some soft yogurt cheese but I'm ready to move to the next level and try a complicated hard cheese. This involves the use of rennet and a starter culture, and following a recipe to the letter. Unlike the soft cheese I won't taste the results of my efforts immediately, it will be a tantalising few months before I first cut into my cheese.

I've been reading up on cheesemaking for over a year now and I am sooo impatient to get stuck in. I keep looking at my two goats for signs of pregnancy and I'm hoping at least one of them is in kid.  We will know one way or the other when they reach their due date in roughly three weeks time. Unless they give birth I won't have a milk supply this year.

Being ever optimistic I have just ordered a few bits and pieces from a cheese making supplier in the UK and I'm waiting for the delivery like a child anticipating Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve. So assuming the delivery arrives safely, one of the goats has a successful birth and my cheese making skills are up to scratch we will be consuming our own home made cheddar and blue cheese by the end of summer.

I'm always thinking ahead for my next project and at the moment I'm toying with the idea of home made wine. Cheese and wine, the perfect combination!

Eating Weeds - Nettle Soup

Nature provides a wide range of free 'weeds' that are bursting with vitamins and minerals. The nutrient levels found in weeds are often far in excess of  home grown herbs and salads.  Don't let this time of year pass by without indulging in the delights of nettle soup and harnessing its nutritional potential.  As the tender new spring shoots rise above the soil it's the perfect time to harvest this plant. As spring advances the leaves become tough and once flowers appear the nettles have passed their peak in terms of nutrients. Spinach has an iron content of 4.1mg/100g and magnesium at 51 compared to  nettles with iron at 7.8  and Mag at 71.  In terms of the healing effects of nettle recipes they are said to be a great tonic during menstruation or the menopause. In Ireland the plant was also added to bedding to treat rheumatism, although I wouldn't advise trying this!

Our children were enthralled by what seemed to them as the totally mad notion of eating nettles and couldn't wait to taste the final product.

I came across a lovely little recipe for nettle soup in a book called 'Cooking Weeds: Vegetarian Recipes' by Vivien Weise which I adapted slightly. Choose plants in areas that you know without doubt have not been sprayed with chemicals or contaminated by animals. Take care not to get stung!

First collect 100grams of nettle leaves by snipping with a scissors and letting the leaves fall into a paper bag. Rinse the leaves several times in fresh water. Chop two onions finely and fry them in olive oil for eight minutes in a soup pot, stirring occasionally, until golden. Add one clove of crushed garlic, 500g of diced potato (I leave skins on) and one litre of water. Bring to the boil for fifteen minutes, then add the nettle leaves and boil for another fifteen minutes. Add 200ml of cream, milk or soya milk and leave to cool slightly before using a hand blender. Add salt to taste and prepare to be amazed (by the taste, not the photo!).

Serve garnished with grated carrot, beetroot, cheese or a dollop of creme fraise. It's delicious and you can literally taste the goodness, chi, prana, or whatever you want to call it.

How to Store Apples

I'm still using the cooking apples we picked from our orchard back in September 2007, but I'm now down to a final basket.  We have been enjoying apple sauce with pork, apple crumble and apple tart for the last six months.  I have to admit that I was a bit cynical when I first read about apples keeping fresh all winter, but I have a memory from my childhood that spurred me on to try it out ... I was playing at my great Aunts and I found a stack of boxes in an empty stable. Inside the boxes were layers of red apples. I remember being amazed when it dawned on me that these were her own apples that I'd so often eaten from her orchard, yet it was the middle of winter, and there they were all sitting perfectly ... and still delicious!!!

There really isn't much to it. All you need is a dry cardboard box and a collection of cardboard fruit packaging trays.  Both these things are available free of charge at our local Supervalue supermarket ... an excellent example of  reuse, 'one mans waste is another mans gold'.

Collect your apples from the orchard, both from the branches and windfalls on the ground. Only store the ones whose skins are totally unblemished because the slightest bruising or break in the apple skin will quickly cause the apple, and all those beside it to rot. Make sure no apples are touching each other. Stack several layers in each cardboard box and store them in a cool dry place. Check through your stash every three weeks or so and remove any apples that are showing signs of bruising. This is a good time to bring a basket full indoors, otherwise its easy to forget about

When you are reading up on what varieties of apple trees to plant around your garden make sure you get a good book. The information on each variety should include details on whether or not it stores well. You don't need a vast area to enjoy home grown apples either. As a child my parents grew two beautiful apple trees flat against our city garden wall, a technique known as espalier.