Duck & Raspberry Pen

 So, thought I'd do a bit more about the new tunnel as there was quite a few questions. 

The 60 raspberry canes turned up early last week and I got them in the ground within an hour of them turning up!

New Duck Pen

A few weeks back I asked everyone's advice about enclosed pens for poultry. 

In the end, after much thinking I decided to get a small (ish) polytunnel frame and enough net to cover it. I decided it had a few advantages over the cheaper chicken pens, it would last longer, be wroth soemthign to sell if we ever got rid of it, and if we needed to we could easily convert it to a proper polytunnel to grow more crops under cover. 

this one is quite low, only about 7ft high, but it only took me about 2 hours to put up on my own (not including clearing the area with the digger). The posts for the tunnel are just hammered into the soil, so it's not a permeant structure. 

 The children then helped pull the net over it. 

Raspberry Slice

So many raspberries at the moment it's almost becoming hard to know what to do with them!

But I'm loving my latest recipe I've been messing around with - Raspberry slice! 

Our raspberry patch is about 25ft long and 6ft deep so as you can imagine it produces a fair few raspberries each day at this time of year. I can normally pick a couple of large punnets full every couple of days. I've frozen loads, dehydrated them, made jam, cooked crumbles and I wanted to bake with them more, but not just chucking them in a sponge, that's gets old fast.

So I decided to have a look around the internet and then alter a recipe to suit what I have to hand! 

This turned out really good, everyone loved it and it's got so many raspberries in it it almost has to be healthy!

70g of almond flour,
250g self raising flour,
280g of brown sugar,
200g of butterTwo eggs 500g of raspberries (I used fresh but I think it would work with frozen ones as well)

Mix the flour, almond flour, sugar and melted butter together (I melt the butter just to make it easier to mix together). 
Get about 100g of this mixture and keep to one side.
Then mix in the eggs and pour onto a tray.
Lay half the raspberries all over it and sprinkle on the mixture you held back.
Bake for 45 minutes at 180.
Then get out and add the other half of the raspberries and cook for another 15 minutes.

This tastes amazing!

Great cold or with custard whilst it's still warm. I imagine it would work well with other fruit as well.

Let me know if you give it a try.

Anyone else got a good baking recipe using raspberries?

Good Value To Grow

1.4kg of Organic raspberries picked from the fruit garden Friday morning.

Waitrose organic raspberries are £24 per kg so that's £33.60! 

Although I'd probably settle for their essential British range at £12.75 per kg making this little lot worth £17.85!

If I only had a small garden I'd concentrate on growing berries, tomatoes, salad leaves and courgettes I think. Heavy cropping and high value.

With these we ate some fresh for our lunch, then I made half a dozen jars of raspberry and apple jam (I think it works better with apple so it's not so "pippy").

And dehydrated a load to add to our breakfast, cakes and cookies. These are pretty intense if you have them straight out of the jar! 

Hopefully I'll pick a load more this week as well.

What would you do with a glut of raspberries?

Food Drying

Last year I dried a few raspberries when we had a glut, every time I've used them in my baking they've tasted amazing so this year I've decided to dry a lot more. My little old food dryer is going flat out to try to dry these juicy berries. 

 A full punnet (about what I'm picking a day at the moment) dries down to about 3/4 of a kilner jar.

 While I was at it I also dried some bananas that had gone past their best (and a few apples on the top layer to fill up space), they make great snacks for the kids and I wouldn't have used them for much else (I didn't fancy banana cake today).

My food drier is very basic, just one setting and it's pretty noisy. I was wondering just how good are the more professional models and are they worth their big price tag?

Raspberry And Apple Jam

I used to think making jam was a big deal.

Now it's something to be done on a Sunday night with a spare half hour! 

 Picked some of the last of the autumn raspberries on Saturday. They aren't as sweet as they were at the start of the season and they don't keep very long in the fridge. Making jam with them is a good way to preserve them and by adding a couple of apples to it makes it go a bit further (I also think that it helps with setting the jam as raspberries have low petin).

I just mixed equal quantities of fruit, weighed it, stewed it and then added just under the same amount of sugar before boiling to setting point.
This has to be one of my favorite jams, it just tastes so good!
Toying with the idea of selling my jam in the honest box - What is homemade jam worth and will people buy it?

Picking Raspberries

Our Autumn fruiting raspberries are just starting to produce a lot of fruit. This means that I get dragged down the garden by my little girl every night to pick them.

Telling me which ones she wants

 They've only been planted here just over a year (as I moved them from our old allotment) but they've grown so much that they take some controlling. They do seem to be like the gift that keeps on giving!

Loads more to come yet

Serving suggestions anyone?

From now on I should get around a bowl full a night from our 20ft row (mind you it is 5ft thick!). I dread to think how much this would cost from the shops, I just wish we had room for our big chest freezer here so we could use them through the winter.

Raspberry Jam

We've not had a huge amount of anything out of the garden this year, but we've been having raspberries most nights now for quite some time. The Autumn fruiting raspberries are great, as they crop for so long but as the nights get colder and the days shorter they start to loose their sweetness a little bit, although I still think they're lovely - not so great for our baby to eat (who has her fathers sweet tooth I fear).

 With a bit of a glut from a few days of not picking, I decided to make some jam. Normally this time of year I have so many things to make jam out of I wouldn't know what to choose, but not this year! Still even though it's a small quantity of fruit (800g) I thought it would be worth it, especially as there's no damsons this year (for my favourite jam).

 Jam making is ridiculously easy.

• Weigh the fruit 
• Boil it 
• Add an equal quantity of sugar 
• Boil it some more until setting point is reached 
• Put it into jars
• Eat it

Only four jars made but we don't really eat much jam so it should last us a while. It tastes amazing and should soften the blow of not having any damson jam this year.