Elderflower foraging walk

Why collect elderflower in your back garden if you can take a gorgeous 2 km elderflower foraging walk around the farm?

There’s a big elder outside Casina Nuova, but this morning I wanted to take a walk so I decided to walk around the Western borders of the farm and pick elderflowers from the smaller trees along the hedgerow that separates our farm from the neighbours.

The walk proved to be very nice, the crop was abundant, even if most elders grow in the shade so not all flowers are in bloom yet.

I walked down from the cowshed towards one of the pastures where our cows will roam free as soon as this rainy May stops. This is the field: not a bad place to spend some lazy summer days, isn’t it?
Elderflowers come in very different sizes, but I don’t think that I ever saw such a big one! (and people who met me, know that my hands are rather big!).

My elderflower foraging walk went on and look what I found: a roe deer antler! It’s over 20 cm long and it has three points so it certainly belongs to an adult, or even old, male (female roe deeers don’t grow antlers).

By the way, if you would like to know why I collect elderflower you can have a look at my elderflower liqueur recipe and elderflower jelly recipe that also include a few other interesting uses like elderflower cake my favorite! Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that elderflowers are delicious: have a look at this beautiful rose chafer!

From the Western borders of the farm there was an excellent view of the house where Casina dei Tordi and Casina Nuova are located, including our recently plantes lentils field.

Now that my elderflower foraging walk is over I’m off to preparing some elderflower cordial (500 gr water, 500 gr sugar make a syrup and pour, still hot in a jar with 15 elderflower heads and a sliced lemon, let rest for 24 hours, filter, squeezing the leftovers well, bring to a boil and bottle) and dry the rest of the flowers for future uses. Wish me luck!