I said yesterday that we’ve been a bit busy on the home front recently, and here’s one reason why.  This is The Store Cupboard, which is now full.

We have bottled pears, damsons, strawberries, blackcurrants, rhubarb, Morello cherries and tomatoes from the garden and the allotment, and bottled plums from the local biodynamic PYO farm.  And we have rhubarb jam, rhubarb and elderflower jam, damson jam, blackcurrant jam and bramble jelly.

I made some of the jam but nearly all of this is Elsie’s handiwork.  It would have been nice if one of us had remembered to do an inventory of how many jars of what are in there, but we forgot. Like we do every year.  What I can tell you though is that we got 20lb of damsons off our own tree and 32lb off one in town which overhangs the path and nobody else takes any interest in whatsoever.  Oh, and the pear trees in the garden yielded 72lb this year, not all of which has ripened enough for bottling yet.  Where we’re going to put the rest of those, I have no idea.

Yes, it’s a great deal of work, but it’s very satisfying work.  And it’s even more satisfying getting up off the sofa in front of the logburner in the middle of winter, opening that cupboard and deciding what to have for pudding.

In case you’re wondering, the demijohns contain what Elsie calls country wines and I call drain cleaner …