Pickled Shallots

We lifted the shallots from the garden ten days ago and left them to dry in a shed.

Then we peeled them, and put them in brine for 24 hours.

Rinsed and sorted by size, they are now ready for putting into jars.

The spiced vinegar had been cooled and left with chillies, cinnamon, all spice, mustard seed and bay leaves to infuse.

The vinegar is poured over the shallots, and now we have to wait for a while before we can taste the fruits of our labour!

We haven't had much success with shallots for the last few years due to the wet weather, so it is all the more satisfying to have managed a good harvest this year.

The Orchard & Apple Pressing

We planted the orchard in 1993 (the trees were a wedding present). At the time there were very few Irish varieties available, and we spent quite some time looking and eventually found 3.

About a year after we planted we saw an advert from the Irish Seed Savers Association, looking for 1/2 acre sites on which to plant Irish varieties. Oh well!

We orginally planted Irish Peach, Ecklinville Seedling and Ard Cairn Russet which are Irish varieties, and then any trees we have lost over the years have been replaced with Irish apple varieties from the Seed Savers, namely: Sheeps Snout, Uncle John’s Cooker, Yellow Pitcher.

We also planted James Grieve, Bramley, Lord Derby and Worcester Pearmain. So that we now have about 16 apple trees.

The rest of the orchard is made up of pears, plums, greengage, damsons, 2 medlars, 2 quinces and 1 cherry which does fruit but we never get them because the birds always beat us to them!

We were taken a bit by surprise on Saturday as the first of the apples were ready about 3 weeks ahead of last year, and so we had to get set up for pressing our Worcester Pearmain and James Grieve. Four trees in all. Apologies to Ella who wanted to come and see the process, but we will be doing it again!

From blossom in May ............

..........to fruit ripe for picking in late August.

Onto the quad bike, which carries the crates to where we are set up.

And with unparalleled concentration, the apples go into the crusher...........

.....which chops and macerates them into small pieces ready for pressing.

We have a small screw press which takes about 1/2 a crate of crushed apples at a time, and depending on the variety produces 2 to 3 litres of juice per pressing.

We then bottle up the juice, and freeze it. Nothing added! And the juice keeps perfectly for up to a year.

Our afternoons work yielded up about 35 litres of delicious juice from 4 trees. Much better than letting them go to waste.

The first of the plums!

In the orchard the fruit is starting to ripen. The first fruit is always this small delicious purple plum.

The variety is 'Early Rivers' and it is great to eat straight from the tree, or stewed, or made into crumble; it also makes good jam.

As it is the first to ripen we eat lots and lots as it is at least another two weeks before any of the other varieties are ready to pick.

Irish Draught Horse Breeders Association National Show

Where to start! We had the most fantastic day out, as you can probably guess by the sash sported by Derrynagarra Dash. He was 4th in the mixed two year old colt and gelding class. It is always difficult for a gelding to compete against the colts so we were happy with his placing in a class of 10 animals.

We then took part in the 2 & 3 year old gelding championship.

Derrynagarra Dash Champion Irish Draught Gelding being presented with his sash and cup !

Our yearling filly Derrynagarra Bliss awaiting her turn to trot up in front of the judges.

Trotting away. The yearling filly class had 13 competitors. We finished 4th in the class and were very pleased with that. For anyone who is interested the full results are available on the Association's website www.idhba.ie

The end of the day!