This week, we have taken a lovely blog post from one of our farms, Little Comfort Farm, who recently held a charity open garden day. You can read all about it here…
We were blessed with one of those wonderful, unexpected sunny autumn days when we welcomed locals and holiday guests to our charity open garden day to raise money for the North Devon Hospice. With a plant stall, cream teas, cakes and tractor & trailer rides it was such a happy day and raised £395 for the North Devon Hospice.
In preparation I had made a large batch of gooseberry jam with gooseberries from the garden and then on the morning itself baked a batch of 125 big scones. I know not everyone is a fan of gooseberries so rather naughtily I didn’t label it as I was sure people would like it if they tried it! Well, there was much discussion on one table as to the flavour of the jam and the verdict was ‘definitely strawberry and a good jam at that’!
So the recipe this week, continuing with my theme of preserving the garden produce, is gooseberry jam. The gooseberries I used had been picked in June during Adam and Jenny’s wedding week then frozen. The bushes yielded the most amazing quality of fruit and are trouble free – slugs and birds seem to leave them alone. They have been pruned now and will have a thick layer of compost put around them to keep the weeds down and feed the bushes ready for another harvest next year.
