The Honey Is Ready 🍯

There’s a little bit of pride, a smidgen of shock, and an overwhelming amount of excitement as I’m writing this… drum roll please… our first ever batch of this tiny life honey is all jarred up and will be available to pre-order later today! 🍯

In our latest vlog that’s going live this afternoon, you’ll see Jack completing the last stage of the honey harvest with this liquid gold going into the jars - and we’ll share in the description the link to pre-order one of the 66 jars we have available. (It was 67, but we bumped into a lovely couple yesterday - Pauline & Matt - who had the first jar from us and gave it raving reviews!) The video will be going live on our channel at 4pm, if you’d like a jar, please do join us over there!

Anyway, it’s been a week of preserving the feeling of summer, and so let me tell you a little about what else we’ve been up to this week.

For the first time in a long time, I joined the Early Risers’ Club - and it was bliss. It was 6 something on a Wednesday, Jack and Joe were still snoozing, when Tilly and I snuck up the ladder, and headed out. The birds were mostly still singing from inside the hedgerow, a duck effortlessly glided towards me leaving a perfectly symmetrical ‘V’ in the open canal behind her, and I passed no-one - that is until the hum of an engine crept up behind us. A boater from the early risers club was enjoying the solitude that comes with this time of day.

Every time I escape into early morning air, I have the same whimsical feeling that this should be how I start every day. But instead of making promises to myself I can’t keep (timings with a toddler can be unpredicatable), I’m holding dear the quietly calming feeling of this summer’s morning, hoping I can sneak in a few more before the morning light fades. When I was pregnant, I looked into hypnobirthing and it was recommended to go into labour armed with memories of a specific time or place that conjour up peace (mine was sitting on the beach watching the waves near my parents’ home!) Now, I think the feeling of this morning would make the list.

Anyway - besides that calming feeling, I also came home with blackberries for Joe’s morning porridge, and a selection of grasses and flowers for my new hobby.

You know when you show a little interest in something on social media, and then it’s all you see for the foreseeable? That’s what has happened to me with drying flowers. I love everything about this art - from the slow process of the act itself, to how they look once dried. But the most powerful thing for me is the time capsule each becomes. One little preserved flower can be as powerful at jogging a memory as a Polaroid. The flowers from my walk are now drying inside our River Cottage Every Day hardback - delicately placed within kitchen roll. I quite like the rustic approach - no need for a purpose-made flower press, yet. When they’re ready in a few weeks, I’ll pick my favourite to frame up - with the rest probably making it into my journal.

The last bit of preserving this week happened with our homegrown onions. Jack hoiked them out of the soil a few months ago, and they’ve been patiently waiting in the greenhouse to be brought home. Now sufficiently dried out, I’ve finally been able to do something we’ve been wanting to do for years: stringing them up.

They are now on display in the kitchen, hanging in a way that is fit for a farm shop — a posh one at that. I immediately decided I didn’t want to use them. And so when we needed some onions for a curry night later this week with Jack’s homemade bhajis, rather than releasing a couple of homegrown beauties, I headed to the farm shop.

I’ve realised we have a little bit of a track record of this. We’re just very bad at letting things run out. I am certain there are at least one or two chutneys in our little apothecary unit from last summer’s harvest, tucked in behind some delicious hedgerow drinks that we can’t quite bear the idea of running out of. This is all despite the fact that the foraging window for these delights is about to come back around.

Just to paint a fair picture, we did give away loads last year to friends and family, so it’s not selfishly hoarding as such. It’s more a desire to keep hold of something so precious for just a little bit longer. Does that make sense? Do you do the same, or is this just us?!

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I will tuck into the onions, but another week or two of admiration can’t hurt.

Anyway, it’s only mid-August. There’s plenty of summer left, but I can tell through these little acts of preservation that I’m already trying to hold on to it. There are still plenty more flowers to find and early morning walks to sneak in before the season turns.

And if you’d like to see the flower pressing, the onion stringing and Jack’s bhaji recipe, our latest YouTube episode is going live later today.

Ttfn,
Gabby x