Plenty of strawberries at Macalla farm!

We rarely have too much strawberries. In past year, strawberries that made it to the house (most of them where eaten straight from the plant by kids and helpers) were turned into Strawberry frozen yoghurt. But this year, thanks to the diligent care of Adriana and our fantastic of helpers, we actually have a very abundant crop of strawberries.
So we’ve turned to jam making with this delicious recipe that combines strawberries with rhubarb.
Strawberry and Rhubarb jam
- 1 kg strawberry
- 1 Kg rhubarb stalk, chopped fine
- 2 Kg sugar
Put the rhubarb stalks and the sugar in a pan and cook until the rhubarb is tender. Add the strawberries, bring to the boil, and cook for a further 20 mn. Put in sterilized jars, close immediately.
Wild mead
Mead, sometimes referred to as honey wine, may not be a popular fermented drink any longer but it is one of the most ancient ones and it’s very easy to make. It is made by fermenting honey with water, usually with some flavouring added. Depending on the concentration of honey in the water, and on how the fermentation in managed, mead can be sweet or dry, still or sparkling. Dry mead will usually be more alcoholic (up to 20%), as all the sugar in the honey is fermented, and if you bottle the brew before the fermentation is completed you will end up with a fizzy drink as the CO² from the fermentation is trapped in the bottle.
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Late summer foraging
The mare who wanted to be trimmed….
An email arrived in my inbox the other day from a former students on our Natural hoofcare courses, and I thought I should share on this blog the amazing story of this mare who badly needed to be trimmed, and managed to find someone to do it for her.
Foraging in June
Foraging may be a bit of a dying art, for most people, it’s just blackberry picking in late Summer. But June offers some great foraging opportunities in the form of elder flowers. Read more
Horsemanship and mindfulness, the Epona approach

Ever since I read The Tao of Equus, I have been very interested in the Epona approach to horsemanship and Equine Assisted Learning. Recently, I had the good fortune of attending a three day Epona workshop near Dublin with Yvonne Monahan and Rosie Withey. Read more
Ice cream — Macalla Farm style
A good ice cream maker is an expensive piece of kitchen equipment, but every time we use ours, we find that it was money well spent.
As we have plenty of sheep’s milk yogurt in the summer, we make plenty of delicious frozen yogurt (we refer to them with the generic term: ice cream). This greatly increases our range of desserts. Furthermore, there is usually very little work required, as can be seen in the recipes below: Read more