Hi friends, long time no type.
This is always what happens around this time of year. As much as I say that summer is my least favorite season, as soon as the sun comes out and the weather warms up, I want to spend all of my time outside and none of it writing blog posts. I think it helps that it doesn’t get as ungodly hot and humid in Ireland as it does other places I’ve lived (and the sun and warmth aren’t givens either, so I always want to make the most of it).
Then autumn rolls around, and I start feeling like, well, I suppose a bit like hibernating animals feel as they get ready for the cold, dark days of winter. I get productive and motivated, preparing things and getting things done. Although I obviously don’t need to eat my weight in salmon or lay in a supply of acorns, I do get that “end of year” feeling around September where I start to wrap up some summer projects, start winter ones, and look ahead to my little New Year routines like setting up my bullet journal.
I know that I fall victim to SAD, particularly with Ireland’s extremely short, usually rainy days, so having routines and hobbies and things to look forward to helps. But I love this transitional time, when the air gets crisp and the days are shorter but not too short, and when I can take my summer activities into autumn.
I’ve gotten into foraging in the past couple of years, the fullness of the hedgerows and the lack of poison ivy in Ireland combining to create a good environment for it. I began with picking blackberries on all of my walks, sometimes coming back with a kilogram in only the half hour or hour I’d spend outside at lunch.
I’ve since branched (ha) out to hawthorns, sloes, elderberries, yarrow, meadowsweet. Basically anything that is easily recognizable and not potentially lethal. Like, I’d love to start foraging mushrooms, but I’d definitely want to get some expert training first; I’m not about to start just eating fungi out of the ground (cue “dumb ways to die” jingle).
I took my last foraging walk over the weekend, just before they cut the hedgerows back along the rows, in order to grab one last haul of sloes. Then, outdoor adventures completed, I turned to my indoor activity of processing my harvest. Some of the things I’ve made so far:
- Blackberry wine
- Blackberry jam
- Blackberry and apple crumble
- Blackberry muffins
- Blackberry cheesecake bars
- Blackberry Bakewell
- Blackberry syrup
- Elderberry syrup
- Elderberry tincture
- Elderberry powder
- Yarrow powder
- Yarrow tea
- Yarrow oil
- Meadowsweet tea
- Sloe gin
- Hawthorn jam
And I’m still planning to try some oxymels and ketchups and a few other recipes with what I’ve got left.
One thing I really enjoy about the process is how it almost feels like a ritual. I’ve been trying to get back into a yoga routine lately, and it feels similar, the journey of slowing down and making deliberate movements.
There are a dozen hacks online for the easiest and quickest way to remove tiny elderberries from their bushy stems, but why do we always need the easiest and quickest options? Why would I freeze the branches for faster removable or scrape the berries away with a fork to take them off in clusters rather than individually when I could sit cross-legged on the floor, listening to music and separating the berries from their stems one by one. It’s meditative.
Anyway, my goal for this year was to write at least 20 blog posts and this is number 19, so you’ll be hearing from me at least once more in the next few months. But as the temperatures drop and the days get shorter and I’m spending more time inside, I hope to spend more time writing as well, so I’d like to think there’ll be more than one more blog post coming along.
I have been reading an ungodly amount of books, so there’ll at least be a few book reviews on the horizon. The kind of thing you could read over blackberry jam on toast and a cup of mint tea.
thebestpossibletime 