I am back after a year-long sojourn to the world of
commercial blog writing. It was an ill-fated trip, suffice to say that I am not
cut-out for having to chase, cajole and threaten to get my invoices paid. The upside of this realisation is that I can
now return to this blog without fear of infringing on anything I was writing
commercially. Now that I’m back, I’ve decided to expand my original remit to
include more about my life as a hedgewitch. I had initially promised to keep
religion out of my blog, but as so much of what I do has a connection to my
pagan belief that it felt rather restrictive. And frankly, silly.
Mabon seems like a good place to resume. Mabon is the autumn equinox, usually around
the 21st or 22nd of September and comes pretty much at “harvest
home” or the time when the last of the crops of been gathered in. At the
equinox the planet is tilted at the right angle to give the same amount of
daylight as dark. After the autumn equinox the daylight gets shorter than the
darkness (assuming you’re in the southern hemisphere, but let’s not complicate
things). It’s a time for giving thanks for the harvest that’s
just been completed and any other blessings you have in your life. The equinox is also about balance, as the day
and night become balanced by equal length, we balance the joy of an abundant
harvest with the knowledge that the fields are now empty and cold days are
coming. The hedgerow harvest is usually
at its most abundant around Mabon. Crab apples, rose hips, elderberries and
hawthorns are all virtually bending the hedgerow branches over to the floor
with their fruit near my home. I
celebrated Mabon by going for a tramp about the fields where I live collecting
crab apples and haws (the berry of the hawthorn bush) Hawthorne trees were called Hag trees in Old English, which
must be why I’ve always loved them so much!
The white blossom in May looks so pretty and traditionally May Queens
were crowned with a wreath of it. Most
of the ancient hedges where I lived are dotted with these trees, and after I’ve
appreciated the beautiful blossom in the spring, I like to plunder the bright
red berries to make jams and jellies in the autumn.
Here’s my picking basket early on in the foraging mission.
The tiny crab apples have the perfect amount of pectin to help set a jelly made
with berries that don’t have much themselves, like haws. Don’t be put off by the
crab apples appearance; they’re like the Cinderella of the hedge. Misshapen and usually scabby on the outside,
they are transformed into things of delicious beauty when made into jams or
jellies.
I used 600g of hawthorn berries and 1400g of crab
apples. Wash your fruit and berries, and
then put the haws in a large pan. The crab apples need to be cut in half and
added to the pan and then add just enough water to cover them. Bring it to a
simmer, and then cook gently until the fruit is all soft and pulpy. I give the haws a quick mash with the back of
a wooden spoon if they look like they need some more breaking up. Then tip the
whole lot into a jelly bag and leave to drip through the muslin of the jelly
bag into a large bowl overnight. Don’t be tempted to move it, touch it or
otherwise hurry the process in any way or you will end up with a cloudy jelly.
The next day, sterilise your jam jars. Measure the amount of
juice that has dripped through your muslin jelly bag. The fruit I picked this
time yielded about 450ml. For every
600ml of juice, add 450g of granulated sugar (if you’re as mathematically
challenged as I am, you can get the calculator out to scale this up/down! Add
the juice and the sugar to your preserving pan, and bring gently to a boil,
stirring all the time to dissolve the sugar. Once boiling, put your sugar
thermometer into the mixture and bring it to the setting point, which is 104-106ºc
(220-222ºF). Then pour into your sterilised jars straight away, don’t let it
start to cool in the pan or it will start to set in there. As you can see here, my 450ml of juice yielded
two jars of jelly. Yum.
