Apples, Cider and Cheese- Very Rustic!

Like everyone else, we had a bumper crop of apples this year, and I have also discovered a couple of apple trees on the valley where the fruit is going begging. I only need some new ways to use them. I have enough jam (gooseberry, mixed fruit and blackberry and apple) to last at least two years, my diet doesn't allow crumble or pie too often and the freezer is full.

So yesterday, I was experimenting with drying apples in slices.

I don’t have a dehydrator so I was planning on peeling, coring and cutting the apples into slices and then laying them on cake cooling racks in the oven. The first part was easy, I did it in the living room whilst watching Ceebeebies with Oliver. He sat on the floor beside me and ate almost as fast as I sliced. I know fruit is good for children but surely it is possible to overdo it?

Then I arranged them on trays and put them in the oven.

 I was worried about the oven, the books say to dry them at 60-70°C but the lowest temperature on my oven is 110. The books were also vague about how long to leave them in for, the advice varied between 4 and 24 hours, but I suppose that is reasonable as it will vary on the apple and the thickness of the slices. I had the oven on for three bursts of two hours, each on the lowest heat with the door propped slightly open to reduce the temperature further. Then when it was time to pick up Oliver from nursery, I turned off the heat, shut the door and forgot about them until this morning. 

They look okay, some are a bit chewy, some are crisp. They fill a jar nicely

 and I suppose time will tell if I got it right or if there is too much moisture left and they go mouldy. The books say in order to use them, soak them in water for twelve hours first and then use them in baking. I reckon I could make three or four pies with this lot.

Whilst the apples were drying I was also experimenting with juicing the apples. I would dearly love an apple press but at £200 to £300 pounds that is clearly out of the question so I crushed the apples in the food processor 

and then strained them through muslin,

 picking up the muslin and squeezing out as much as I could. Later on the internet I saw that some people use electric spin dryers, which I think is a fantastic idea, putting the crushed apples first in a clean pillow case and letting the juice come out with centrifugal force. Spin dryers can be picked up second hand for £10 to £20 so I shall keep my eye open for one of them.

In my laborious way ,I made about a gallon of juice. I put a litre of it in a zip lock freezer bag and put it in the freezer but as I said earlier, the freezer is almost full at the moment so I need to find alternative ways of storage. The rest of the juice therefore, I have put into a demijohn to ferment naturally into cider.

 I did add a campden tablet yesterday to kill any natural bacteria but decided against adding sugar as I am not wanting the cider to be particularly strong. Hopefully the wild yeasts naturally present on the skin of the apples will start to ferment in the next 24 hours, if not I have some wine yeast I can add. Already after twelve hours the apple sediment has started dropping to the bottom of the demijohn.

Hopefully this should produce drinkable cider by Christmas. I also want to make perry from the excess of pears we have and to experiment with cyser which is made from apple juice and honey, a sort of cross between mead and cider. I do also have the honey available to try a few bottles of mead. On the non alcoholic front I would like to try preserving apple juices by pasteurizing it. Having my own store of apple juice to drink or use in cooking during the year would be very nice.

Also going on in the background yesterday, was a batch of home made cottage cheese. When I’d nipped into the supermarket for milk at lunchtime, I saw that the 6 pint bottles were reduced to clear at 30% off. I bought two and emptied them into the big stainless steel pan

 and heated to luke warm and then added rennet and left it to set. Incidentally that little bottle of rennet is lasting ages and still working after its use by date. After a few hours I noticed it had set,

 so I broke it up and turned up the heat to encourage the curds to separate from the whey. I poured off as much whey as I could and then left the curds to drain further in the colander.

 With a sprinkling of salt it was delicious and like Miss Muffet I ate a bowl on its own. After that there was 1 lb 6 ozs left so it must have made about 1 lb 12 ozs. I have decided to use it in a curd tart and to experiment by adding dried cherries instead of the usual sultanas and flavouring it with a splash of kirsch.

Of Bees and an Old Joke

Just as well I've been pushing myself to do the painting these last few days, as I woke up this morning to pouring rain, I had to put my raincoat over my pyjamas to go let the chickens out. Despite the rain they came shooting out of their house as if they hadn't eaten for a month. Of course, since having to re-roof the run to keep the fox out , they now have an area to go in that is under cover although today’s rain was still coming in through the chicken wire sides of the run. None of the chickens are laying at the moment which is a bit depressing, the two chicks are still too young, although the Orpington has grown huge, the three ex batts have been putting all their energy into growing their feathers back and do look almost respectable now, Mary and Amelia have no excuse. Last year Amelia stopped laying in the autumn and didn't start again until January so I may have to resign myself to having to buy eggs for a while.

The quail are no better as regards laying and really it is time I moved their cages into the garage for the winter as they are not as hardy as the chickens. Oliver and I may go to sort out a space for them later. At the moment we are sitting comfortably on the sofa playing Ceebeebies games on one laptop, whilst I try and write this on another.

Yesterday, as soon as I’d dropped Oliver off at nursery I was out in the garden. First, I did the long overdue task of sorting the bees out for winter, feeding the hives that seemed light and removing any supers that didn't have any stores in them. If there were any supers with honey in, then I swapped them over so that they are now under the brood boxes instead of on top. On two of the hives I reduced the size of the entrances by putting a wooden block in place. I only seemed to have two of these though so I will have to buy another three and also buy more of the metal mouse guards which are pinned into place to stop mice raiding the honey during the winter. It is also time to treat the hives against varroa and then, after that, I can safely leave them alone for a while. I was encouraged at how healthy the hives were looking, all five hives were stronger than any of  the hives I had last year. I could also see bees coming in with their backs coated in white pollen which is a sign that they have been visiting Himalayan balsam, an invasive foreign plant which is much disliked by everyone except beekeepers who appreciate the pollen it can provide late in the season. It is good to know that my bees are within flying range of Himalayan balsam just as it is good to know they can access alder catkins in February for an early start to their season. Next year my challenge with the bees is to try to pre-empt swarming. Although it was good experience, handling this years swarms, and has allowed me to build up to five hives, to get a good honey harvest, the bees really need to be  able to concentrate on bringing the nectar in rather than building up a new colony after swarming.

Inevitably, inspecting the bees took longer than I thought, and it was nearly five by the time I’d finished putting everything away but as Oliver was spending the night with his other grandparents, I didn't have to collect him from nursery so I was able to zip out into the front garden and do a little more in my mission to obliterate the orange paint. Yesterday was the turn of the drainpipe,

which copying all the neighbours I painted black.

 As the drainpipe is next to my neighbours front door, it put me in mind of the pun I once heard on ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’, ‘Was it you who spilt black paint outside the front door? Well go and never darken my doorstep again!’.