Currents grow well here on the farm in all the colors and types, however in the spring of 2024 there was a early spring with not a single frost which meant that its been a amazing fruit year!

In all the years here on the farm i have never seen such a heavy flowering and fruiting crop on my current bushes, we had to prop up and or remove some due to weight. The Black Current bushes were productive to the extreme and while we used fresh fruit to make juice and Shrubs

We were still able to put four 8 cup tubs away for future use into the freezers. With the shorter days, adding in dark black/purple fruits are a very good thing.

8 cups of cleaned Black Currents

Water to just cover them, cook med heat till skin is popping, mash and simmer low for ten more minutes, put them though a food mill or fine mesh strainer to get all the juice and as much pulp as you can leaving behind the seeds/skins

• dry the skin and seeds to grind for use in baking or teas blends or feed them cooled to your chickens

Simmer this down by 50 percent, measure and do 1 to 1 parts honey or sugar, simmer down to your desired thickness of syrup, i like mine at standard pancake syrup thickness. If you want to do small jars, you can follow standard water bath processing and process them for 15 minutes an they will be shelf stable.

In my case i just put into a clean dry jar and put the lid and ring on and allowed to cool to room temp and then placed in the fridge, we will be using it up over the next month or so

With the cooler days, i will be adding in a tbsp of this into my daily morning routine to give a little boost but what i am most looking forward to is making a good old pot of oatmeal and serving it up with a bit of cream and swirl of black current syrup.

30 Day Challenge – Day 12 of my getting back into the habit of blogging daily!