Ah thank you Rebecca! That's lovely to read. I only just restrained myself from including an image of that lost well, but it doesn't really belong here.
Grains and pulses: had to look back at it. 'Plots' not 'pots'!! ;-)
“The rain it raineth. And raineth.” Oh Roselle, doesn’t it just!
Here we have never, in 20 years, seen so much rain… there are puddles in my veggie patch for goodness sake! When I think back to all the summers where the ground was parched and hard as concrete I could cry… but thank goodness ! The land is replenished, water is flowing (again) at last….
And, I know well the ‘brain fog’ affliction too. I have been trying to write a piece about maps and seasons and ancestry related to and on my hill since December, I have three weeks left in which to finish it… the brain cells are still fogged up refusing to clear and I feel the all too familiar ‘panic mode’ click in. Indeed, it is the reason I am sitting here and have been since 5am!
On the subject of springs; I’m delighted to hear you found yours, our tiny hamlet was placed purposefully central to five springs. I know the location of each one, two run dry every summer, the others somehow maintain the trickling, one of these is said to be a holy spring, it’s cool water believed to hold powers of healing. I’m not certain how though because it is far from ‘potable’ perhaps one has to bath in it?
Anyway, I must ignore the beautiful distraction I find here and tackle the brain fog…
Sending you still drenched wishes for a happy weekend! X
Thank you as always for your comments. I know it can be a pain but I’m SO glad you’ve had the water needed there.
I hope you meet/have met the deadline? We are too hard on ourselves, I think.
Lovely to hear about your 5 springs. We have at least one and maybe three old well-sites on our land; someone (or various people over the years) in their wisdom have filled them in, for goodness sake; one even has the ELECTRICITY PYLON planted in it.
Sadly, much too big a job to have them running again :-(.
"...the purer for being so long lost." Such a beautiful sentiment! Such a pleasure to read your update. I hope that you feel better soon, and that the weather eases into more cooperative form soon 🤣 We had been so warm and wet for a week that it felt like May. Yesterday, it rained all day long, then a steep cold front came in overnight, so we awoke to a fresh blanket of snow and all that rain had flash-frozen onto all the branches! It's so funny to hear a breeze rustle through the forest, and all you hear is the clickety-clatter of icy boughs colliding. It's meant to blow through in a couple of days, and so I think this next week we'll be tapping trees for the maple syrup run. But, this weather is so weird, I'm not sure it will run at all this year! 🤷🏼♀️
How lovely to picture all that, Sydney, and your language is visual and poetic.
And how amazing to imagine such a different harvest than anything we do here - maple syrup tapping! Are these maples you've planted, or naturally-occurring ones? I have tapped silver birch in the past - beautiful light syrup that's health-giving – but it's not like maple syrup.
💕They're naturally occurring maples. Here in Maine, they have Red Maples and Sugar Maples, of which Sugar Maples are preferred for syrup. The larger maple syrup operations are like any business - maybe they started as family operations, but if they were lucrative, they've sort of merged and consolidated. Enormous tended forests of Sugar Maples have all this infrastructure built up so that each year they hook up vacuum tubes to all the trees to suck sap directly into a building full of boilers - sap in one end, syrup out the other! 🙄🤣
So our little slice of land has all Red Maples, we think, and some people would tell us they're not worth tapping, that it just takes too much sap to make any syrup. That's probably true from a profitability standpoint, but we're doing it for fun and because it's delicious, so it's totally worth it! It's fascinating, too, wandering through the forest to pick trees, seeing which ones run at which times, how they heal afterwards.
We have one giant maple in the front of our property, out in an open field so it has a large canopy and lots of sunshine - its sap is so sweet, we pretty much just drink it plain. The forest maples, since they're interspersed in evergreens, have smaller canopies and are less sweet, so we boil those down to syrup. It's a lot of fun, and if it runs at all, we end up with enough syrup for our family for the whole year. If it's a good year, we have plenty to share!
I've heard about birch syrup as well, but we haven't gotten around to trying that yet. It's on the list, though :) Fun stuff!
So interesting, Sydney, and apart from my complete ignorance of the maple syrup industry I've added to my picture now of your place.
How lovely that you can keep yourselves in syrup from the trees on your own place! And I didn't realise that the syrup was the result of boiling, though as son as I read that I realised it makes sense.
I used to make rosehip syrup – did we speak of that before? - at home but sadly it requires quite a lot of sugar. The tea from the dried rosehips is so lovely 'as is', though, especially with hibiscus flowers (great for the heart).
I look forward to trying rosehip tea, especially if we get our little wild roses to really take off for us. We’ve kind of extracted them from the tangle of the forest edge and placed them in a sunnier spot where I hope they will run rampant.
Like you, we tend to shy away from things we have to add a lot of sugar to, like syrups and jellies. BUT I make an exception for violet syrup. It’s too pretty and fun to resist, sugar and all. I look forward to summer lemonade now entirely for the purpose of sweetening it with violet syrup and watching it turn pink!
Wonderful post and pictures -- definitely sense several brain cells behind it. Rosemary is the most amazing herb for brain fog -- in tea, in food, in tincture or really lovely diffused as essential oil with lemon. x
Ah that's positive of you Jan. Glad you trust I have a braincell ;-). Been using rosemary - my favourite herb - but not tried with lemon too in the diffuser. Good tip! Thank you.
Loved your post too - haven't had chance to head over and comment. x
Roselle, your ‘Lost Well’ poem and extended story are so wonderful.
And I especially like –shaking pre-set beliefs/exceptions.
Wonderful to hear about your unfolding Forest Garden! Such beauty in it.
Why grains and pulses to be planted in pots?
Ah thank you Rebecca! That's lovely to read. I only just restrained myself from including an image of that lost well, but it doesn't really belong here.
Grains and pulses: had to look back at it. 'Plots' not 'pots'!! ;-)
“The rain it raineth. And raineth.” Oh Roselle, doesn’t it just!
Here we have never, in 20 years, seen so much rain… there are puddles in my veggie patch for goodness sake! When I think back to all the summers where the ground was parched and hard as concrete I could cry… but thank goodness ! The land is replenished, water is flowing (again) at last….
And, I know well the ‘brain fog’ affliction too. I have been trying to write a piece about maps and seasons and ancestry related to and on my hill since December, I have three weeks left in which to finish it… the brain cells are still fogged up refusing to clear and I feel the all too familiar ‘panic mode’ click in. Indeed, it is the reason I am sitting here and have been since 5am!
On the subject of springs; I’m delighted to hear you found yours, our tiny hamlet was placed purposefully central to five springs. I know the location of each one, two run dry every summer, the others somehow maintain the trickling, one of these is said to be a holy spring, it’s cool water believed to hold powers of healing. I’m not certain how though because it is far from ‘potable’ perhaps one has to bath in it?
Anyway, I must ignore the beautiful distraction I find here and tackle the brain fog…
Sending you still drenched wishes for a happy weekend! X
Hello Susie
Thank you as always for your comments. I know it can be a pain but I’m SO glad you’ve had the water needed there.
I hope you meet/have met the deadline? We are too hard on ourselves, I think.
Lovely to hear about your 5 springs. We have at least one and maybe three old well-sites on our land; someone (or various people over the years) in their wisdom have filled them in, for goodness sake; one even has the ELECTRICITY PYLON planted in it.
Sadly, much too big a job to have them running again :-(.
Rx
What a beautiful read. I'm so looking forward to hearing about the development of your forest garden.
Oh thank you Sarah! How lovely.
"...the purer for being so long lost." Such a beautiful sentiment! Such a pleasure to read your update. I hope that you feel better soon, and that the weather eases into more cooperative form soon 🤣 We had been so warm and wet for a week that it felt like May. Yesterday, it rained all day long, then a steep cold front came in overnight, so we awoke to a fresh blanket of snow and all that rain had flash-frozen onto all the branches! It's so funny to hear a breeze rustle through the forest, and all you hear is the clickety-clatter of icy boughs colliding. It's meant to blow through in a couple of days, and so I think this next week we'll be tapping trees for the maple syrup run. But, this weather is so weird, I'm not sure it will run at all this year! 🤷🏼♀️
How lovely to picture all that, Sydney, and your language is visual and poetic.
And how amazing to imagine such a different harvest than anything we do here - maple syrup tapping! Are these maples you've planted, or naturally-occurring ones? I have tapped silver birch in the past - beautiful light syrup that's health-giving – but it's not like maple syrup.
Thank you for your lovely comment. x
💕They're naturally occurring maples. Here in Maine, they have Red Maples and Sugar Maples, of which Sugar Maples are preferred for syrup. The larger maple syrup operations are like any business - maybe they started as family operations, but if they were lucrative, they've sort of merged and consolidated. Enormous tended forests of Sugar Maples have all this infrastructure built up so that each year they hook up vacuum tubes to all the trees to suck sap directly into a building full of boilers - sap in one end, syrup out the other! 🙄🤣
So our little slice of land has all Red Maples, we think, and some people would tell us they're not worth tapping, that it just takes too much sap to make any syrup. That's probably true from a profitability standpoint, but we're doing it for fun and because it's delicious, so it's totally worth it! It's fascinating, too, wandering through the forest to pick trees, seeing which ones run at which times, how they heal afterwards.
We have one giant maple in the front of our property, out in an open field so it has a large canopy and lots of sunshine - its sap is so sweet, we pretty much just drink it plain. The forest maples, since they're interspersed in evergreens, have smaller canopies and are less sweet, so we boil those down to syrup. It's a lot of fun, and if it runs at all, we end up with enough syrup for our family for the whole year. If it's a good year, we have plenty to share!
I've heard about birch syrup as well, but we haven't gotten around to trying that yet. It's on the list, though :) Fun stuff!
So interesting, Sydney, and apart from my complete ignorance of the maple syrup industry I've added to my picture now of your place.
How lovely that you can keep yourselves in syrup from the trees on your own place! And I didn't realise that the syrup was the result of boiling, though as son as I read that I realised it makes sense.
I used to make rosehip syrup – did we speak of that before? - at home but sadly it requires quite a lot of sugar. The tea from the dried rosehips is so lovely 'as is', though, especially with hibiscus flowers (great for the heart).
Thanks for sharing all that with me :-)
I look forward to trying rosehip tea, especially if we get our little wild roses to really take off for us. We’ve kind of extracted them from the tangle of the forest edge and placed them in a sunnier spot where I hope they will run rampant.
Like you, we tend to shy away from things we have to add a lot of sugar to, like syrups and jellies. BUT I make an exception for violet syrup. It’s too pretty and fun to resist, sugar and all. I look forward to summer lemonade now entirely for the purpose of sweetening it with violet syrup and watching it turn pink!
OH! What a lovely idea!
Wonderful post and pictures -- definitely sense several brain cells behind it. Rosemary is the most amazing herb for brain fog -- in tea, in food, in tincture or really lovely diffused as essential oil with lemon. x
Ah that's positive of you Jan. Glad you trust I have a braincell ;-). Been using rosemary - my favourite herb - but not tried with lemon too in the diffuser. Good tip! Thank you.
Loved your post too - haven't had chance to head over and comment. x
Sounds as if you are growing into the land nicely too.
Thanks, Wendy - beginning to... X
I was glad you addressed the Finistère thing in your last post - haven't had time to comment, but will do.
Wow, just wow...I salute you! Xx
Well, that's nice, thank you ... Do you mean on finding the correct coppice hazel?? ;-) x