Sloe, sloe, quick, quick, sloe

 Autumn is the time of foraging.  And we love it.

In the past we have made a cornucopia of products with our sundry foraged goods.  Today was our first day of the year for collecting free fruit together!  

We decided to go for a walk this morning to check on the progress of the demolition of the Fawley Power Station.  This includes a fabulous trek from Ashlett Creek along an assortment of paths through woodland, grassland and along the coast of Southampton Water.  Before we'd gone a few hundred yards, we were overwhelmed by the bounty presented to us of blackberries, rosehips, apples and a few sloes.  

The rosehips in particular took us back to the holiday we had several years ago with Phil's Mum in Slovenia.  It was here that we discovered rosehip jelly.  This was our last trip with Mum, so was particularly poignant.  We had hoped to go to Austria with her the following year; but this was not to be.  She died, far too young, later that year.  

Thus we decided that with the wealth of fruit, we'd need to come back with food bags and pick enough rosehips especially to honour Mum's memory.  When we saw the apples, we further decided that we'd need to bring the trolley as well to carry our haul!  We will be doing this later in the week.

Since there weren't too many sloes on that route, we decided to try another location - Holbury Manor - where Phil used to play as a child and later picked sloes for all sorts of uses.  

So we did.  We came back with a haul of 1kg sloes (just over 2lbs for those of us who prefer the imperial  measurements)  Our idea is to combine them with blackberries to create flavoured gin for Christmas.  

We will also be making rosehip jelly and cider.  I hope Mum is smiling! 

To be continued...