Home produce

Well, the rains came.
So much so that today, unusually, I hardly ventured out except to release and shut up the poultry.

It was a day for domesticity. Having made an effort to pick the gooseberry crop yesterday before the weather changed, today I turned it into seven jars of jam. I also made a loaf of seeded sourdough bread. The hens produced three eggs and the ducks, two.

All this can be seen here along with the elder flowers whose fragrance marries so well with the flavour of goosegogs that it is a traditional practice to draw a spray of the blooms through your jam pan before potting up the finished product.

After I took the picture I couldn't resist: I had a new-laid boiled egg followed by fresh bread and still-warm jam. Delicious.