Autumn – the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

George Eliot

A delicious time indeed. This is when we have traditionally celebrated the harvest and there is a fantastic range of locally-grown seasonal produce with some great foraging to be done for blackberries, sloes, elderberries and rosehips (although a bit late for blackberries now).

There are some lovely recipes for imaginative ways to enjoy and preserve your foraged goodies including blackberry jam – or jelly for those who don’t like the bits; apple&blackberry crumble, crab apple jelly, sloe gin, elderberry wine and rosehip syrup. All of which are great for your own store cupboard or for putting together wonderful Christmas gift hampers for friends and family.

One thing I won’t be making is elderberry wine. I can still remember the noise and the smell when racks of Dad’s homemade elderberry wine exploded in the cupboard at the top of the stairs creating a dark red waterfall all the way down. As Dad was also away that weekend I think he was barred from making wine (well red wine anyway!).

Up at the allotment I am still enjoying harvesting green beans, brassicas, chard, kale, squash and salad leaves. 

The potatoes are stored away in hessian sacks, the onions netted and garlic hung. My onion crop was very small this year, in terms of the size of the onions, so I will use a lot of them for pickling, much to the delight of a couple of friends who love them.

A major part of my ‘Good Life approach’ is to grow or eat locally sourced food. This also means that I am getting to eat what is in season, which I really enjoy because it means they seem to have much more flavour, the travel miles are minimal and you are supporting local producers.

Many of you may be getting veg boxes delivered which often contain recipes to try. My local farm shop, the Bushel Box in Willingham, always aims to stock as much local and seasonal produce as possible. 

At the moment the tables are laden down with apples grown right there on the farm. 

They grow over 30, yes 30 varieties so you can have a lot of fun trying a range of flavours and texture with some wonderful names including: Howgate Wonder, Bloody Ploughmans (pictured), Ashmead’s Kernel, King of the Pippins, Lord Lambourne, Pinova and Reverend Wilkes.

Below are some of the other foods currently in season in the UK:

Meat	Vegetables	Fruit & Nuts	Fish
Duck, Goose, Guinea Fowl, Grouse, Heather-fed Lamb, Pork Pies, Rabbit, Sausages, Venison	Cavalo Nero, Celeriac, Celery, Colt Cabbage, Kale, Leeks, Parsnips, Potatoes (main crop), Pumpkins, Romanesco, Savoy Cabbage, Shallots, Squash	Apples, Blackberries, Cranberries, Damsons, Elderberries, Figs, Pears, Quince, Sloes, Wet Walnuts	Brill, Crab, Dabs, Dover Sole, Flounders, Haddock, Mackerel, Mussels, Oysters, Skate

www.bushelbox.co.uk, www.goodtoknow.co.uk/food/seasonal-food-calendar-71128/ , www.lovebritishfood.co.uk/british-food-and-drinks/whats-in-season-when

We often seem to jump straight from Summer to Christmas preparations, but Autumn is a lovely time of the year. There have been some beautiful days, so Sasha and I have been out enjoying our walks; the colours are wonderful and food delicious.

Merry Autumn everyone!