GATHER YE ROSEHIPS

I’m late with my hedgerow harvesting this year, but there are still Sloes on the Blackthorn bushes in the hedges and plenty of Hawberries on the Hawthorn.  The berries on the Hawthorn look so juicy, but they’re full of fat seeds surrounded by itchy fibres (used by children to stuff down one another’s backs as itching powder).  Last year I endeavoured to make some jelly from them, but it was very tedious.  After much mashing and boiling and straining I managed to squeeze a couple of jars of Hawberry jelly out of around 3 kilos of berries.  It was a beautiful colour and went very nicely with cheese - but not nicely enough to send me rushing out  with a basket again this year.

We have field mushrooms at the moment (actually they’re just coming to an end too).  They are completely edible, but eating wild mushrooms isn’t something I’d recommend unless you know what you’re picking.  Some poisonous fungi look very much like edible ones, in fact there is a toadstool that looks just like a field mushroom that’s fairly toxic, so I’m always a little nervous even when I pick the innocent ones in our field.  This year we haven’t actually eaten any at all because Sam and the dog have trampled all over them, so we won’t have the worry.