Adventures with rosehips

This year we decided to do something with the hips from the wild rose bush near one of our garden fences. After a bit of reading I decided to make rosehip syrup to use over winter, and mostly followed the directions from Carla Emery's excellent Encyclopaedia of Country Living, with a bit of The Cottage Smallholder thrown in!

While I was out buying pears for drying and bottling ($2 a kilo form the local orchard!!) Jerry was picking hips. Then he spend a happy (?!) hour or so de-stalking them while we watched some "The thick of it" on DVD. So funny. Peter Capaldi is just brilliant.

 While they were straining in the jelly bag (given to me by mama and papa Jerry ..see I use it, it's great!!) I also put a few of the 6kg (!!) tomatoes Jerry picked with some home grown basil and garlic to slow roast in the oven for pasta sauce.

And here's the result - from about 1.2kg of hips I have just under 2l of syrup. I'm planning to call my mum to ask her to save her hips too as she has loads of roses.

What about those pears, I hear you ask. I bought Red Sensations (a red williams pear) and regular williams (oh, and a kilo of peaches cause they smelled so nice). The reds are destined to be dried pear, and the williams I will bottle. Got to make the most of the season whilst they are cheap!

Oh, and Aussiemade to answer your question I have an Ezidri FD1000 dryer. I picked this one based on other people's reviews, availability, and the accessories available - also it can dry up to 30 trays at once (I have 10 at the moment). I prefer to use the solar drier that Jerry made, but it has been too humid. However, I try to only use this electric one when I have 10 full trays on the go to make it really worth the electricity.