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sauerkraut
There are useful things that I like to make purely for the pleasure of it, to have just what we want at a higher quality than one can buy, and enjoy the thing knowing it’s homemade. Sauerkraut goes a...
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gingerbread village
Having spotted a charming image of flat gingerbread houses carved in low relief and filled with powdered sugar, we just had to try it for ourselves. A whole wintry afternoon was spent in great joyful...
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flying the coop
When it was time to take our leave of the cottage on the lake and go to live in the old farmhouse at Ravenhill, moving house was quite literally what we needed to do. Our sturdy little henhouse had a...
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herbal cough syrup
We like to forage for plants in early autumn that support our health through winter illnesses. A very timely medicinal harvest, like the nettles in spring. Some years I’ve made elderberry cordial,...
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the 1940’s beds, improved
Curiously, when we assembled the antique beds after painting them, the beds did not look like this: Instead, each bed lay at an angle, attaching a couple of inches higher at the headboard than at the...
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feta cheese
Some friends came round for a day of cheesemaking. Feta! We followed the recipe from Mary Karlin’s excellent Artisan Cheesemaking at Home, reprinted below with kind permission. Little by little I’m...
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dividing comfrey
One excellent way to become more self-reliant about improving soil fertility is to grow comfrey. Comfrey is a perennial herb, related to borage, also known as knit-bone or boneset…also known as a...
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drying nettles
The moment to forage for stinging nettles is early spring, while the tops are young and fresh. Heavy gloves and great respect for the plants are required. A friend on a nearby farm harvested some...
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making traditional rhubarb soup
Kiiseli is a fruit soup from Finland that generations of my family grew up making. This family recipe is drawn from my mother’s best advice, her 1966 Finnish cookbook, a peek through my grandmother’s...
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storage crops
In the daily reckoning of what it takes just to feed ourselves well without creating destruction in packaging, pesticides, chemical fertilisers, questionable additives, social injustice, unethical...
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