Autumn Alchemy

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Our moorland harvest

It continues to be a beautiful autumn here in Dartington, as all the work of nature over this growing season bears fruit in the local gardens, fields and hedgerows and days are often lit with a warm, gold autumnal sunshine. As part of my musing and preparation for a Living Spirit ‘Women’s Mystery School’, I’ve been re-visiting some of the practical, handwork mysteries modelled and taught to me by my own mother. Recently I even bought a new preserving pan…my very own cauldron!

Ian, Tam and I started our autumn alchemy by making quince jelly for our Autumn celebration and house warming. It was surprisingly inspiring to go through the process of transforming some rather rough windfalls into translucent, jewel-like jelly. First we gathered the golden ‘japonica apples’ from under the quince trees, then chopped 2lb of them into our cauldron (cores and seeds and all), added a couple of pints of water and watched and stirred over a few hours as the cooked ‘base material’ turned from off white into a pale rosy red. Next we strained our unpromising looking sludge through a jelly bag (in the form of a scalded muslin tied onto an upside down stool). By the following day we were reboiling the resulting liquid with piles of sugar (1lb to 1pint) in a process of purification that involved regular ‘scum skimming’. Watching the scum boiling up to the surface reminding me rather of my daily meditations, only I was now working with a tea strainer rather than the breath!

Tam at the Vicarage ‘jelly station’

The atmosphere was certainly intense and the Vicarage kitchen suitably steamy, as the sweating alchemists laboured towards attaining the mystery of ‘setting point’. Happily the Great Work was achieved as we found the delicate balance between a runny syrup and something you would need to eat with a knife and fork. Huzzah!

Inspired by the resulting feast of quince jelly and warm scones, we sallied forth onto the moors to forage for haws and crab apples. Watching Ian hang from the tree while hard green and gold crabs rained down on his head was a real highlight(!) and there’s certainly some ancestral inner hunter gatherer who feels very happy to be heading home with a full basket of wild foods. This time we tripled our output and as we visited our neighbours with jars of our crab apple jelly, we received gifts of their own preserves, their own fruit and empty jars….another wonderful outcome to this simple, autumn alchemy…

Autumnal Alchemical Gold