ELDERFLOWER, SUMMERTIME FUN

Hello everyone and welcome back to Crowley House Flower Farm. This week Brayden and I finally got around to processing some of our elderberry flowers or they're flowering right now. So we like to infuse our elderflower with a couple different alcohols one being some vodka and the other one I've never done this before but this time we used um what is it called ever clear but mainly for medicinal reasons I guess it's really good when you have a cold that kind of thing you also like water it down you add it to something but it draw what I understand is it draws the goodness out of the elderflower and better than like a regular like you could use gin or you could use vodka that kind of thing so the other thing we did was just make a elderflower cordial that turned out absolutely fabulous we put a little bit of lemon in it um and just boiled it with a tiny bit of we used honey instead of sugar because we have a lot of honey here on the farm and I tell you man it made if you if you make it for anything make it just for the smell I mean it made the kitchen smell like summertime goodness I mean there is nothing better this is the end of July for us here on the farm and you can see we've got lots and lots and lots and lots of elderberry or elderflower still going I mean I'm thinking that I'm going to make one more recipe for um just putting up of the cordial because it was just delicious and I'd love to have a little bit more but normally this time of year we're actually harvesting berries so we've just had a very um cool summer very wet spring um wet summer so far it's um this week we're having a heat wave it's 100 degrees right now so it just switched just like that and it can do that but um you can see that the berries are just still in like green form they're not even blued up or anything so which is kind of cool because I'm leaving for a couple weeks um so I'm gonna go over to Europe with my son Brayden uh just it's kind of one of his little gifts he's uh just graduated from high school he did really really well despite all of his medical issues and that kind of thing he graduated with honors and things and that's one of the things he wanted to do so we've been planning this for a couple years and so I'm gonna head over there with him and toodle around I'm actually gonna go um early with my sister Mary and um we are going to just go to Sweden see a friend of hers and then we're gonna head over to Norway and see my cousins a lot of my friends um some folks that we know from church over there and I think it's going to be a wonderful time but anyways this was just Brayden and I making our cordial and our liqueurs and um yeah just kind of something we do every year on the farm you coming to help I've got eight flowers we need 20 okay and you gotta watch you gotta watch for like how many do we need what today we're making elderflower cordial so we're kind of late on getting to the elderflowers are still blooming normally they're done this time of year and we're actually starting to pick the berries themselves but we thought we would just seize the moment and get it done so we're gonna head in and get our we need a little bit of alcohol some lemon zest and about 20 to 25 heads of cleaned elderflowers which we already cut ours it was super quick and fast we're gonna clean them up we're gonna take them off the stem some of them are starting to like look at that it's like wow fading so head in with us we're gonna go make that bye super easy okay so we're starting to make our elderflower cordial cordial that sounds so fancy so we're starting to make our cordial and what we're going to do is today I'm going to use um a little bit of vodka so I just got something fairly inexpensive at the store each one of these mason jars is going to hold about 20 or so of the flower heads 20 ish flower heads and then we're going to add four cups of vodka and then we're just it's really simple actually we're just going to add a few slices of lemon zest that we just peeled in the kitchen another way you can do it is also make like a gin and I really like gin so um this is another way you could just add gin to it you want to let it sit in the cupboard for about two weeks in a dark cool place and then you're going to strain the elderflower out and it'll be lovely lovely lovely so the way um oh and then the other one I have here this is um not good on its own but this is everclear so everclear you can use more of like a medicinal like if you had a really bad cold or you weren't feeling well um you could do I find that it draws the elderflower out a little bit more that taste and also because it's a higher alcohol the benefits of the elderflower so sometimes I'll make a small amount of this because it is so strong you definitely want to if you're having it for a cold or something um like that that you're you know sore throat that kind of thing um you would probably want to just add a little bit of water to it because literally nasty stuff but it does kill a lot of germs I'm just you know watching you oh like we don't want it completely full you're supposed to push put about 20 heads of flower in I wasn't counting but there's 25 in there so you just want to make sure there's five left oh I thought you're doing that jar too um a weekend what was that jar for well I just got a second one if we wanted to do it shy okay well we don't have enough to do a second jar if you I can go cut some more while you're doing that got it okay so then we'll just do this one okay sweet sounds good so I'm gonna take this first one and fill it up with our vodka and I don't know if you've ever smelled elderflower it's really kind of what do you think it smells like I don't know watermelon a little bit like watermelon like a melon like really fresh a little bit sweet like honey you smell that yeah honey you do smell honey anyways you can actually add a little bit of sugar to this when it's done and make like an elder like flower syrup there's all kinds of things you can do our elderflower cordial is generally non-alcoholic which we will make some of that our crop of elderberries is out of this world this year and I think it's because of all the rain so there are these benefits of having all this rain the apples are looking great so far the cherries didn't do good for us but the elderflower the um pears are amazing we're gonna have a plethora of things so a mason jar is about four cups and that's what this recipe calls for so I'm just gonna top it off and make sure the alcohol covers all of the little flowers we're gonna tuck it into our wine cellar can I tuck it in with your wine yeah we should we shouldn't build a cellar first you know our wine cellar is under the stairs so we did wash all of the elderflower just to make sure we do live on a gravel road so we do get a little bit of dust coming through and that's kind of up closer to the road so um we felt like we should probably wash them they weren't that dusty but um and we kind of picked to the back side where the dust doesn't come so much but we're excited and it's good to spend time with Brayden yeah isn't this fun Brayden so Brayden and I just finished up the elderflower cordial so what we're doing is we just did the same amount of elderflower heads it's really important that you don't get all the stem edge the green part that all is not very good for you it's actually kind of poisonous and that's true with a lot of medicinal plants so you have to be a little careful and do your homework read about it that kind of thing so um we went ahead and added four cups of water to our 20 heads of elderflowers and then we sliced one lemon and we're bringing it to a boil and then we're going to go ahead and let it sit overnight tomorrow we'll add a little bit of sugar to it um you could add like um so we use the kind of like the raw sugar but you could also use like maple sugar whatever sugar you would like we tend to the more natural sugars so um that's what we're going to do tomorrow and then you bring it back to a boil and it makes like a syrupy kind of drink that you could add like a seltzer to it's kind of refreshing uh anyways that's what we're doing and so those are the three different elderflower cocktail beverage things that we're making this year we tend to make them every single year they're super yummy to have on the shelf like i said a lot of times we grab the everclear for you know when you have a cold or sore throat we'll grab some of that um it's really strong so it's not very fun to taste um but it does work well um later when the elderberries are going i will make obviously some of the elderberry syrup for like pancakes the kids like that and um we'll make some more elderberry um what is it called you know for colds and coughs i will make that elderberry cough syrup whatever they call it anyways so i love having these bushes they are prolific this time of year and so we're putting them to use here on the farm and stocking our pantry okay that's it that's all i know about elderflower i know no more i hope you enjoyed this video and thank you so much for tagging along with us here at crawly house we sure do appreciate it thanks again for watching and we'll see you next week in another fantastic video from the garden much success in all you do and grow and we will be seeing you shortly bye