Medlar harvest time.

A text arrives from friend Kaye each early winter to say “They’ve dropped!”. I know of course exactly what she means, the medlars are dropping to the ground and ready to be collected.

She and friend Lizzie, pictured here, spend a lovely day gathering them from amongst the leaf litter and straw under the tree.

They are placed on an old doona (now repurposed and renamed as “The bletting blanket”).

A week or so later we go to collect them, always in the chill of a winter morning, but according to a tradition of more than two decades now, we are warmed by one of Kaye’s delicious morning teas.

Then home here to our shed they come, transferred to straw lined boxes to complete the bletting process.

Once this is finished, vodka and sugar are added to make specialty of our house – medlar liqueur.

We love this annual pilgrimage, the circle completed with taking Kaye a bottle of medlar liqueur in appreciation for her generosity in sharing her medlar harvest.

The best of times.

(In the second photo, 3 stages of medlar. To the left, medlars before bletting; in the centre, medlars after bletting and finally medlar liqueur, liquid gold.)