Foraged Hedgerow Jelly: from tree to table |

Today we went on an autumnal amble off into the wilds around OxGrow on Hogacre Common EcoPark to forage for edibles- and then the wonderfully talented Katie ran us through how to make Hedgerow Jelly.

High in vitamin C (especially if you cram it with elderberries and rosehips) hedgerow jelly seems to taste great no matter what edibles go into it. One word of warning- just make sure you don’t put too many tart sloe berries in and you’ll be fine. Also, blackberries are overpowering so if you don’t want blackberry jelly keep them to a minimum and let the less common hedgerow berries do the talking.

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Foraged Goodies: bowl of berries & crab apples

We foraged lots of different hedgerow treats in and around Hogacre Common Eco-Park, and we found:

an ABUNDANCE of haw berries and crab apples

as well as: ~ rose hips, ~ elderberries, ~ blackberries

& ~late season wild strawberries & ~ runaway raspberries

Then we washed everything, removed the elderberries from their stalks using a fork (top tip!), and got our chop on with the crab apples.

Everything berry goes into a jelly which is great- no faff with deseeding [ haws have one large pip, and rosehips have lots of seeds (which can be used to make itching powder!)], nor coring.

We quartered the apples so we could separate and compost or release any “extra protein” that tried to crawl into our jelly fruit mix. The muslin (or old (yet clean!) cotton t-shirt, tea towel etc) for straining get rid of all those bits.

Then we followed Katie’s recipe which we’ve uploaded here… Katie’s Hedgerow Jelly!

In the meantime you can come try and even buy (for donations) the lovely hedgerow jelly we made, at Hogacre Common’s Harvest Festival on 14th October from 12- 5, and we’ll save a jar for Abundance’s Apple day on 21st October from 12-5 for everyone to try then too.

We’ll go on another foraging walk and make an appley hedgerow jam on Apple Day…. Come join us! If you haven’t got facebook send us an email at abundanceharvestsoxford@gmail.com and we’ll happily give you more info on the events and tell you how you can help us out – you can ask to join our newsletter too!