vegetables – Penny Reilly Artist Beyond the Gate

Nature is in a hurry this summer… we don’t usually harvest quite so many tomatoes this early in January and the continuum is normally into May/June for the season to end. Many are still coming on and the harvest is now a daily practice again… soon I’ll start passata making, kasundi relish, dehydrate to make an intense powder to rehydrate for pizza and/or pasta sauces or oven slow roasted to preserve in oil or freeze.

In the same theme, elder, rowan and hawthorn berries are well on the way, which to me, indicates a short intense summer and an early autumn, manifesting.

Our cherry season is the best in many years and it’s always a race to pick and process them before the bloom, so to speak, is off the cherry… happily mixing metaphors here 😏

Self sufficiency is about preserving, (and as mentioned many times, not about hoarding), as much as possible in the way of healthy produce and understanding there are multiple uses and ways to preserve the goodies. Freezing, dehydrating, pickling, conserves, bottling in syrups or alcohol to name but a few. Every year I discover new methods despite many years of growing, harvesting and preserving food that sees us through winter, allowing us to share, both fresh and preserved foods.

I often freeze produce first to preserve them when I can’t process fast enough before they decay. Cherries, for instance, can be frozen with their stones left in. This also makes pitting easier on defrosting as they tend to be a little softer than fresh from the tree, which is ideal for jam making or for tart fillings, syrups, juices etc… let’s face it a harvest of 75 kg is huge and not something two people can eat alone but sharing both harvesting and the loot is a wonderful and fun community endeavour.

Preserving in alcohol is a simple way to create both boozy-soaked cherries and a syrup, versatile in their uses, such as pouring over icecream, (adults only) adding to tart fillings or simply as a syrup in a glass of bubbles or a cocktail. Brandy, vodka, gin, port, wine etc., all make a wonderful preservative together with a little sugar, lemon juice, orange peel, spices such as star anise, cinnamon, vanilla bean etc., and the purchased spirits don’t have to be the most expensive brands, either.

To start from scratch with producing a delicious cherry mead for the cold season to come is a delightful experiment, using honey, lemon, yeast and sugar for the natural ferment process and of course, cherries.

The bottles shown above will be turned upside down every couple of days to make sure the sugars are distributed through the liquid… alcohol dissolves the sugar fast but sugar can also sit on the bottom for longer than practical and if not shaken up a little, slows down the ferment process.

Next will come apples, pears and autumn raspberries and blueberries… beans are making another round of flowers and I’ll be planting another sort for a longer season. Cucumber, melon and pumpkin are all flowering and if their flower promise makes good, then another major spell in the kitchen will arrive.

Beetroot are just about ready to harvest and as they come on all at the same time, I’ll wash and freeze for later pickled beet or slice thinly and dry for a vegetable powder or chips to nibble.

Next comes onions and I might experiment with making a powder for winter use and so that too many don’t bolt to seed quickly. I noticed packs of dried vegetable powder at the local supermarket, advertising a way to get an intense amount of vegetable into the diet but too much is also not a good thing to overload the system with and at $11.00 for 250g, that’s outrageous. Powders are great to preserve a glut and to use when a particular vegetable is either too expensive or unavailable due to crop harvest issues but can never replace freshly grown produce.

Then will come the battle to net grapes and hazelnuts so that we actually get to eat some. We may well leave some for the birds but trust me, they don’t leave a scrap for us if left unchecked.

Everything is in abundance as storm clouds gathered again this afternoon… so I disappeared into my studio to sit it out and make some inroads into finishing a few pieces I’ve been working on and also little by little setting up and Etsy shop for people to buy my prints and cards online. A safer platform for both myself and my clients, thus far, so, as they say, ‘watch this space!’