Going on an Elderflower Hunt..

I absolutely love elderflower and when I drank the last of my shop brought and highly expensive cordial I decided that it would be far more satisfying to make my own. Now I have never foraged for elderflower before but after getting some advice and looking at lots of photograhs of the plant I decided to hop on my bicycle to fill my trailer up with elderflower. When travelling in my car down a country lane I passed lots of elderflower bushes, it was a 10 minute bicycle ride from my house so I headed that way to forage what I could. It looks like someone had beat me to it this year but I managed to use my height as an advantage and came home with a basket full of atleast 40 elderflower heads.

I decided to try and make some elderflower champagne aswell so as soon as I got home I got started by boiling 8 litres of water (which took forever!) I then put the sugar, boiling water, lemons, elderflower and the white wine vinegar into a large fermenting bin and its currently sitting in the kitchen waiting for the next stage.

I am going to tackle the cordial tonight, I was far too tired to start it last night as I only managed to sit down and relax at 11 o’clock at night! It was a super busy day but I managed to make some cages for my two strawberry beds with a lot of help from my amazing Dad. I’ll be taking them up to the allotment later today and hopefully that will protect my strawberries from both the birds and the mice that keep nibbling all my fat red strawberries.

It is that time of year when there is just so much to do, everything is growing including the weeds so it will be nice to relax in the Summer with a glass of elderflower champagne or cordial!