I began to make rose hip syrup on October 4th (see earlier blog post), but decided instead to make the pulped hips into an ink for drawing. So last Sunday I spent a whole day making syrup using hips from another bush growing from the disused WW2 bofors gun emplacement beside the Egg. I used a recipe issued by the Ministry of Food in 1944.

Work commenced gathering hips from 09.00 until 13.00.  These were washed and from 13.30 to 15.00 all were topped and tailed. From 15.00 – 17.00 the jars were sterilised and the hips boiled and strained, before reducing six pints of fluid to to just under one pint.  Eight hours of work, half a pint of paraffin in the stove and two pounds of hips produced just one and a half jars of syrup. It makes one think carefully about our relationship with the land, the flora it sustains and my own regular profligacy with the jam spoon.