For women, winter work used to involve a lot of textiles. There was, and is, a lot of wool to be spun and garments knitted and mended. People used to wear wool shirts and wool trousers as well as coats which would wear out and need to be darned. In Victoria’s time, children were taught to knit, sew and darn in school or by a Governess.
I have seen some beautiful framed examples of the darning from that era. A student’s master work was so important that it was sometimes framed like a picture. A master work involved being able to match the colours and textures of a piece of tweed fabric. I darn a bit and from this experience, I know just how skilled people are who can mend in this way.
My father taught me to darn. He could really darn beautifully as he was a bachelor until late in life when he met my mother. I have only taken up darning again in the last few years as darning greatly extends the life of wool socks.
I also have time in the winter to bring out my spinning wheel and spin up some of the roving I have. Roving being carded and partly spun wool yarn that is very easy to spin. I am a total amateur compared to the real shepherdesses of a generation and more ago. I remember seeing a photo of a woman in Southern Italy spinning a fine, white thread from a greasy, uncarded fresh fleece. That is magic!
A more modern set of circumstances see people making preserves in the middle of the winter rather than the much busier autumn. We have some lovely Marion berries growing in the garden. We got a huge harvest of fruit last summer. I spread the freshly-picked berries on baking sheets and froze them. Then, I put the berries in bags to process later or to eat fresh.
I was explaining to a friend that we had recently bought a hand of bananas. She asked why that was significant. It is because we hardly ever buy fruit as we produce so much of it ourselves. Marion berries, strawberries and cherries form the bulk of our winter fruit eating with plums entering the equation in more fortunate years.
I have been using my Finnish steam juicer to process heaps of Marion berries. The fruit is loaded into the top chamber, the juice drips into the middle chamber and the bottom chamber holds the boiling water. Juice produced in this way is so much easier than the previous method of juicing which involved the mashing of the fruit by hand with a potato masher and then draining it overnight in a jelly bag.
To make Marion jelly, and there is no finer flavoured jelly in the world, I measured the remarkably-clear juice as I got it from the steam juicer and added 3/4s of a cup of sugar for each cup of juice. Then, the juice and sugar is simmered until it comes to the jelling point. I like to use the frozen saucer trick to find the jelling point.
When I begin jelly or jam making, I put a small stack of saucers in the freezer. I put a little spoonful of jam on a saucer and leave it in the freezer for two or three minutes. After that, a finger, dragged through the syrup lets you know if the jelling point has been reached. If the jelly has to cook more, the syrup will slide back together after you pass a finger through the syrup. Once the jelly is done, the jelly will wrinkle up on each side and the syrup will not run back together. It really is that simple.
That said, years ago, a friend as trying to make strawberry jam and the recipe said to boil it until it hit the jelling point. My friend had cooked the strawberries for hours but she left the lid on the saucepan. The point in boiling jams and jellies is to reduce the water content through evaporation. You have to leave the pot uncovered.
After the jelly, I processed another load of maybe 12 pounds of Marions through the steam juicer. I sweetened the juice with a little honey and then canned it in pint jars. We use juice like this to flavour soda water and it makes and excellent and refreshing drink.
My next project is to steam even more Marion berries, probably two loads to get the juice for my husband to make Marion wine which is another delicacy. Blackberry wine is very tasty and intoxicating, much more so than it alcohol content would suggest. I expect the body simply becomes giddy from ingesting all those phytonutrients.
All this really to say how much I love that steam juicer and what an excellent piece of homesteading equipment is .
