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Showing posts with the label Te Koha

The Wool Story

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Te Koha organic, biodynamic wool, fresh from the sheep. Cleaning and sorting the wool to use in my lavender and wool filled pincushions, see the previous post. One gorgeous pile of the softest, sweetest smelling wool for me to use. Now to the story which my friend Bev, of "French Street Plum Jam" fame, told me last week. I have typed it out exactly as it was written: I was five years old when my mum invited me and my five siblings to go wool picking and the wool would be made into half-quilts for our beds. Mum would make a picnic of fresh homemade bread, butter from our churn and delicious plum jam made into sandwiches and a bottle of cordial for each child which we stuffed into our leather school bags and slung over our shoulders. In our hand we each carried a sugar sack to gather our wool in. We walked up hills and around the fence lines picking the wool off the barbed wire fences where the sheep had stopped to scratch, leaving behind little tufts of wool snagged on the...

Jam Making

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Yesterday turned into a jam making day as I had not been able to resist these two pots of freshly picked blackcurrants at our local organic growers shop. Click HERE to go to their website where they also have a link to a short YouTube video - the little shop is right at the end of the video. I call in every few days to see what they have and if you go there, buy the juice, its delicious. They also have wonderful looking garlic at the moment and apple cider vinegar. I love that little shop. I used THIS recipe but cut it down to quarter measures as I only had 500gms of blackcurrants. I also used raw sugar as thats what I have and didn't do the initial washing, just picked them over followed by a quick rinse. Warm homemade jam is something else and I know this because I ate quite a bit of it yesterday.