It looks like it will be a good year for strawberries. The new plants have covered most of the area of their bed and are, in turn, covered in green berries. This morning, I pulled out all of the weeds from amongst the strawberry plants – most of these were potatoes! I harvested 1l of baby purple potatoes, they will be tasty in tonights dinner. The next step was to cover the strawberry plants with mesh to protect the ripening fruit from birds.

Yesterday, the young adults and I collected 3 buckets of elderberry flowers. I soaked them, plus the zest from 3 lemons and 1 orange, overnight in 4.5l of boiled water. This afternoon, I strained the liquid from the flowers, added it to 3kg of sugar and the juice from the lemons and orange and brought it all to the boil. The syrup was bottled, yielding 8 bottles. On tasting, eldest son and I decided that there is too much sugar and not enough elderflower last. There is a nice elderflower after taste, but while drinking mainly the flavour of the golden sugar used. Perhaps it will be better once the syrup has cooled completely and fizzy water is used to dilute the syrup.