97 - Glorious Gorse

Thursday, April 19, 2018



It has felt like the longest of winters this year. Trees stripped bare for what seems like an eternity, the moors turned to that golden brown that signifies a lack of anything much going on for an epic amount of time (I'm talking fairytale princess nap length of time). The first signs of new growth and spring, even just a flicker of that squishy kind of fresh green, feel like oxygen to my soul.



When we were walking recently we stumbled upon an area covered in gorse. All those yellow flowers felt like an explosion of life, the beginnings of a Jackson Pollock on a blank canvas. I've since found that it flowers all year round (particularly prevalent from around January to June in the most common variety) but I'm not going to let that spoil my delight.



Seeing the abundance of flowers turned my thought to picking and preserving (have you clapped eyes on DO Preserve yet? It's full of simple but good recipes, we use ours A LOT - you can buy it here) and I remembered having seen a recipe for gorse cordial some time last year. I didn't pick any flowers to try it out this time as we were away from home for a few days and I didn't think the flowers would keep but here is that recipe, both for safe keeping for me and for you to have a go...



Ingredients

As many gorse petals as you can pick! Ideally, at least a litre jugful.

Water

Sugar

Juice & zest of two oranges

Method

Pick the gorse flowers on a dry sunny day, ideally when you can smell the coconut fragrance as this will give a more flavoursome cordial.

Put the blossoms in a pan and cover with boiling water. You want to add just enough water to submerge the flowers. Leave to steep overnight.

Strain through a jelly bag or piece of muslin. Add the zest and juice from the oranges.

Measure out the liquid and pour back into the pan.

Add 700g of sugar per litre of liquid and heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.

Pour into hot sterilised bottles if you want to keep it for a few months, otherwise bottle into clean containers and keep in the fridge.

Recipe found at the Fforest site here. A side note - I found a different recipe that substituted one of the oranges for a lemon, perhaps give both versions a go.



We'll be trying it out as soon as we can. We'd love to see the results of your efforts, you can post on our new community board here or tag us on social media (@alfiesstudio).

Heres to many months of happy foraging, finding and preserving and hoping the birds don't eat everything in our strawberry patch this year!



96 - How to shop better

Friday, March 23, 2018

Alfie's Studio Enjoy the Little Things Card on Display


At the beginning of 2016, we discovered the amazing air-cleansing power of plants and wanted to share our new-found love and knowledge with everyone - our 'Outdoors-In' project was born. To do this we needed a shop space. Miraculously that very same week a small retail space previously used as an office became available on our village high street. Without any experience of shopkeeping but a lot of enthusiasm, we jumped at the chance and signed up.

View looking Out of Alfie's Studio Shop

Two years later, much wiser, and more than slightly sadly, we're saying goodbye to our little shop to give us more time with our small people, while they still want to spend time with us. We'll continue with our online store and plan to grow the space and use it to converse with you lovely folk, to bring you all the goodness you've come to expect from your offline shopping experiences with us.

Some things I've learned along the way:

We should all be thankful to and support our independent retailers as much as possible. Keeping a shop, even a small one, is hard. If done properly, every product has been considered, researched, sourced and the price point agonised over. Bills are dreaded and tax return deadlines loom over like a hidden monster under the bed. Every time anyone walked through my door, I was thankful. Even if they didn’t purchase something, that was their time and consideration, affirming my belief that we had found the best possible products to offer.

Selection of Curated Makers Products in Alfie's Studio Shop

We should question our purchases. If the shop owner / sales assistant doesn’t know the in’s and out’s of what they are selling, you shouldn’t buy it. If there isn’t a good reason why they are offering it to you, beyond the fact that they saw it in a generic catalogue and had a space to fill, do you really need it? If they can’t tell you where, how and with what it was made, can you trust it? We’re working hard with our suppliers to provide more transparent information, but we can, and will, tell you everything we know if you ask.

Curated Makers Candles and Plants in Alfie's Studio Shop

People are, without a doubt, wonderful. We had some regulars, some occasional visitors and some who only popped in once, but pretty much every person gave something to me. A gift of knowledge. A kind word. One fabulous gent popped in one day, got talking and popped back the day after to present me with the most beautiful Jade Plant which I love. I was told once that it took some confidence to come into such a small shop and I was dismayed at first but realised that it was because we are so isolated with our general shopping experience that we don’t feel comfortable having to talk to each other. That’s sad. Once we had nine people in our little space – it was like shuffle twister, but very good natured.

One last thing I will miss are those who live their lives offline. A surprising number of people have commented that they don’t shop online, don’t have smart phones and are generally wary of giving their personal details to a faceless machine. And not just the older generations. These are our people but I have no idea how to stay connected without our shop yet I don’t want to lose them. We’ll be doing markets and pop-up shops so I hope we’ll meet them on our way as I think they should be respected and encouraged.

So, farewell little shop, thank you for growing with me - I will miss you dearly. Whatever winds up behind your window, I shall look in and see our little oasis of plants and inquisitive, friendly folk.

Thank you all for joining in our journey so far. Here's to the next chapter together!

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