Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness ……
Apart from the wonderful Keats poem, did you know that “Season of Mists” is 
a heavy metal recording label? That’s nice to know, as I am a bit of a metaller deep down…………….
However, getting back to the conventional sentiment, these past few days have been beautiful foraging days, with warm air coming from the south and misty and slightly damp conditions perfect for ripening fruit and popping mushrooms.
We have been picking large amounts of blackberries and collecting apples where we can find them, and I have been making lots of blackberry and apple jelly – a perfect distillation of autumn in a jar. I think I made about 60 jars so far, but I need to make some more as I know we’ll be giving some away, or swapping. While I have seen better blackberry harvests, this year’s is pretty good. I have also started on making blackberry wine, and I have 2 gallons on the go (12 bottle’s worth). Maybe that’s not enough, but there’s still plenty of fruit to be picked yet.
Picking down near Mary’s granny’s place near Downpatrick, we met a local farmer who Mary played with as a child. Nicky stopped the tractor, opened the cab door and we had a chat about horses and horse shows, and then he said “there’s lots of mushrooms in thon field” pointing to the adjacent pasture. We bade our farewells and then hopped over the gate and couldn’t believe the number of field mushrooms growing there. The field was south-facing, quite steeply sloping and had never been fertilised. The mushroom rings were up to 10m across and we filled a bucket to the brim with fragrant and maggot-free specimens. These have been transformed into mushroom soup concentrate and bunged in the freezer. Some of the nicest specimens are hanging by the range drying out to be stored for later. Having a bit of a nosey around the local neighbourhood, we found a further 3 fields with rings of field mushrooms, but having picked enough and not knowing the owners, we left them alone for some other lucky foragers.
Drying mushrooms
