A fragrant office: Elspeth Biltoft gathers the creamy elderflower heads that adorn the North Yorkshire landscape near her home.
THERE is a special point in an English summer, sometime close to midsummer's day, when the season is at its most beautiful. This is elderflower time, when creamy blossoms decorate the hedgerows like bridal bouquets in a sea of green.
Country people have a long tradition of harnessing these fragrant blooms to flavour jams and cordials and Elspeth Biltoft of Rosebud Preserves has more experience than most. When I visit Rosebud Farm, Mrs Biltoft's home and business headquarters in the village of Healey, North Yorkshire, she tells me about her childhood at Maske in Swaledale. 'I grew up helping my father make 'I love working along the hedgerows, watching the tortoiseshell butterflies and the shield bugs. It is everything the English countryside should be,' she enthuses.
We pass through a gate and into a field grazed by sheep. At the edge is a wood containing a deserted water mill and the holy grail: abundant boughs of elderflower swaying gently in the breeze. Mrs Biltoft gets to work quickly, deftly demonstrating her method of picking from the taller branches by drawing the boughs down with her walking stick. ‘Always pull gently at the end where it is more pliable, to avoid snapping the branch,' she emphasizes. 'You are looking for creamy whiteheads with a dusting of greeny-yellow pollen. That is where the flavour lies.'
Delicious all year round.
Denne historien er fra May 04, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra May 04, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
