Treasures at the Bottom of the Freezer.

"Ooh! You'll soon fill that!" trilled my Mother in Law when joyous news of my newly acquired chest freezer reached her back in the summer. Sadly, I have proved somewhat inadequate in the stock piling frozen food arena. Fair enough, I did have half a dead sheep in there (not a half dead sheep) but that's mostly gone now and today I removed the last of the summer's foraged fruit, leaving the freezer cavernously depleted.

So now, I have a kilo of stewed cherry plums gently straining in the kitchen where they'll be turned into Cherry Plum Cordial tomorrow. There's also a large bowl each of blackberries and elderberries which I was hoping to also make into cordial although I'm not sure there's enough, but they will make a passable version of Forager's Reward along with some red wine bottled pears.

Today we started work at Plot No7 and realised what a lot of heavy work we have in front of us. Adam started by trampling the paths around the plot flat. It sounded like a simple task to start with but it was actually 2hrs of blister-inducing digging. Tomorrow we're hoping to complete the internal paths and then we can start to prepare the beds ready for seeds.

While Adam toiled with the paths, I toiled at home, emptying last year's pots, planting a few herbs, clearing the mini greenhouse of the last of the winter salad etc I'm quite pleased that we're still eating the last of the Tatsoi and have a small pile of Jerusalem artichokes to get through too. Not exactly self sufficient but satisfying to have home grown and foraged food all through the year.

And all of this activity on minimal sleep as both children were up at 5.30am this morning (sigh) early nights all round I think - zzzzzzzzzzzz ............