Respect your Elders

Elder is one of my favourite trees. It has beautiful creamy flower umbels early in the summer which are a magnet for insects followed by deep purple berries, plates of juicy jewels which wild birds love, especially blackcaps. Maybe it's how the males top up the colour of their shiny caps.

When cut back, elder grows a multitude of dead-straight vertical new shoots which are perfect for lopping off and poking into the ground to become new bushes. Elder wood and leaves have a unique, indescribable smell which I love too. I don't know what the chemical is, but it's said if you poke a stem into a mole run it will drive the mole away - not that I'd want to do that. Elder twigs can be hung in fruit trees to deter insects and the leaves have long been used to keep flies away.

Elder is intertwined in folklore too, with strong links to witches.

But practically, the elder makes a great addition to the hedgerow, woodland or the forest garden. Where it is not quite so welcome is growing in the small space between my sheds and stable block. One has grown up and reached high above, up to about 20 feet tall. I left it as it was still doing more good than harm, but it has grown so much that the trunk is obstructing necessary repairs to the shed rooves.

So I was going to chop it right back and maybe even take it out completely until the turkeys had other ideas. They roost on the stable and elderberries have become their breakfast of choice.

The view from on top of the shed.
They are chopped elder branches on the ground below.

But with the berries finally ripe the easiest way to harvest them was to climb onto the shed rooves and dismantle the tree. Sorry turkeys!

In the early summer we use the flower umbels to make elderflower cordial and elderflower champagne, an excellent drink which tastes fantastic and packs a punch. The flowers are popular for fritters too, though we've always prioritised the alcohol.

We have plenty of elders splashed around the smallholding so every few years we harvest ripe berries too. These can be used for many things, though not eaten raw, but for us there is one product which is unique and trumps all others - pontack sauce.

Pontack sauce is a rich, aromatic sauce full of umami. It's like a fruity Worcestershire sauce and adds a wonderful depth of flavour to stews and slow-cook recipes. Like a good wine, it develops with age. The batch we made in 2017 is just coming to its best.

The downside to all this is that I now have no reason not to get on with fixing the two shed rooves. I also have a mountain of elder branches to process. They don't make great fire wood so most will be chipped and either spread on the perennial beds or added into the compost.

Nothing goes to waste.

ROAD CLOSED - time for a bit of tree pruning

Monday 12th March 2018
ROAD CLOSED - that's what the sign read outside our house. I had been waiting for this, my chance to take off the last few top branches from a willow tree.
This willow is supposed to be a small weeping willow, but it has shot up from the base and turned into a full-scale tree.

But first I decided to move sixteen elder cuttings to their final position. I am creating an elder copse on the edge of the orchard. I think elder is a wonderful plant. It's bird friendly, the berries and flowers are great for cordials, wines and even champagne, as well as pontack sauce. It is easy to take cuttings and the older bushes grow back even stronger when cut.

My new elder copse. It will be impressive in the summer.

I was on Plan B today, for it was too wet and miserable for rotavating the area where I want to sow the butterfly and bee meadow. The soil was too wet and heavy to continue digging the duck pond either.

Our lovely empty road, complete with 

new posts for a new electricity line.

So back to the willow. The branches were rather more high than I remembered and thicker than I thought too. This is probably why I left them last time! But with the catkins coming out, they would soon be in leaf and even harder to deal with. Left for another year they would just be even bigger.
Luckily I had taken off some branches last year, so when I got to the top of the ladder and had to move off it and into the tree, there were plenty of secure places to plant my feet.
I took the job slowly, lopping off the fresh growth first, the wonderfully straight and long poles which had sprouted and reached for the skies from where I had cut last year.
I had three big branches to take off, but did one at a time, stopping for breaks in between. For it is when you are tired and pushing yourself too hard that accidents happen.
This was one job that I was pleased to get out of the way.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sorting the wood I had cut. Logs for the fire, poles and whips for plant supports in the veg garden and the rest for the sheep.

Rambo and his friend appreciated the 

willow I threw in for them.

They especially enjoyed nibbling off the catkins.