I’ve been making marmalade for many years now, every year that we’ve lived in the corner house (that’s been 12 years), and for a good few years before that. I remember the first time that I stocked up on Seville Oranges, I had great plans to boil up buckets of the stuff, unfortunately, I learnt some important lessons the hard way.
If you’ve ever been to Hen Corner, you will have met our lovely cat. He leaves such an impression that he is often highlighted in our Tripadvisor reviews!
If you are anything like me, then there’s always a number of jobs to be done, at home, in the garden, with the family, and with the bees.
I love the Twelve Days of Christmas that begin with feasting on December 25th then allow us almost two weeks of relaxing, reflecting, appreciating friendships and planning.
To all our subscribers, course guests, customers and visitors,
We wish you a very
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
From Sara and all at Hen Corner
I often get asked whether we eat our own chickens, especially when they stop laying eggs, and when I explain that the chickens can continue to lay regularly for over 6 years and the average age of the chicken in the butchers shop is 6 week, people soon guess that an old bird won’t be that succulent.
There’s always a few people that sigh when Christmas is mentioned before December, but I’m a firm believer in getting ready, planning and preparing so that when we light the advent candle we open the door to a whole month of celebrating.
It’s always busy in September. We take the honey off the bees, the apples off the trees and get busy filtering, fermenting, preserving and potting up ready to stash away for colder days or sell to local customers.
The Green Queens…
This year is the first year that I’ve used a ‘proper’ queen marking pen – yes, there is such a thing – and I haven’t been the most neat of artists whilst using it. Previous years have found me sporting an old bottle of nail varnish and, as you can see in the photo above, blue glitter was quite a favourite.
Oops I did it again…
This week on one of my favourite courses, A Day at Hen Corner, I made a classic ‘schoolgirl error’. Well, that might not be the best way of describing it as we didn’t make jam at school – probably too much risk letting teenagers boil sugar to very high temperatures. However, it was a mistake that I’ve made on more than one occasion before.