Okay, I know it’s silly to talk about the harvest when it looks like this outside:
But as you can tell, I’m a tad behind on my posts. But in my defence, harvest time isn’t just the period of pulling the plants from the ground. It’s also the time to preserve your harvest and that could be awhile depending the the crop and its outcome.
The first thing I harvested this year was the rose hips. I’ve never done anything with rose hips before because – stupid me – I didn’t think that roses were edible. At least, not the ones in our backyard. But after a bit of research, I found out that all roses can be eaten but the wild varieties tend to be better tasting. And, it so happens that we have one!
After pulling all the fruit, I had to decide what to do with it all. The first thing I wanted to try was a recipe for rose hip oil. Yes, it’s supposed to be high in vitamin E but that wasn’t the important thing. With all the garbage in cosmetics these days, I wanted something a bit more simple and pure. The original recipe called for almond oil but I used olive oil instead which I kind of wish I hadn’t since it has a very distinctive smell of it’s own. Plus, this recipe called for simmering the fruit with the oil for a long period of time but with olive oil, that didn’t work too well. I actually had to do it a second time since I burned the first batch. Oh well, it’s my first time making oils.
The second thing I tried with the rose hips was jelly which also didn’t turn out as expected. I’ve never done jelly either so I’m sure I messed up somewhere in the process but who cares? Rose hip syrup is definitely yummy too! And with whatever was left from that crop, I dried for tea this winter.
In addition to collecting and drying herbs like oregano, thyme, sage, and peppermint from my herb garden and drying them for cooking in the cold winter months, the harvest that is always the most exciting for me is the Concord grape harvest. Why? Because it means wine! Wine making has been a hobby of mine for about a decade now. I’ve even had a couple of jobs in fermentation too! Not wine, of course but fermentation is a neat process to me and I love being able to make something like that on my own. Well, I suppose the yeast deserves some credit too, right? But it’s fascinating to take something like a grape, and turn it into something completely different; something more complex than just the juice from the fruit.
Admittedly, I haven’t done much wine making for awhile now. There are a few reasons for that. One being that people weren’t too happy about the last couple of batches that I had made claiming that the wine was too ‘tangy’ and gross. Needless to say that that kind of soured me on the process. But I decided to try again this year. I did a bit o research though and discovered that that taste could be related to an acidity problem. I’m trying to work on that with this batch but I’m cautious about proclaiming a solution. As I write this, the fermentation process is going on but something isn’t quite right. It could be the wacky strain of yeast that I found or…I made a mistake in the acidity calculation. Time will tell. Either way, this batch is only for me so whether it works or I just end up with cooking wine, it’s all about the learning, right?
