Jammin' Time Again

Sorry folks, the past couple days got away from me. I'm interrupting the vacation blogging with a quick update about the jam making. If you remember, Thursday it was time to make strawberry jam. This year because of schedule conflicts it was only my friend Liana and I that made jam on Thursday. One of the gals Sarah, who made jam with us last year decided not to do it this year. Then Ellen, Elizabeth, and Liana had talked about doing it last Sunday and since that was the day after getting back from vacation I couldn't commit to that. It was pretty much the last thing I felt like doing after being on the road and gone for almost three weeks. I didn't have all the stuff bought, I had laundry, unpacking, etc. to do last Sunday, and I just wasn't up for it. So with that said, Liana decided to wait for me and we chose Thursday to do it. Ellen and Elizabeth went ahead and made theirs on Sunday though.

We headed out late afternoon on Thursday to Felzke Farms where we pick the strawberries. It was beautiful weather for picking. It didn't take us too long to pick the berries, maybe 45 minutes. Then we headed home and tore up Liana's kitchen making the jam. This year I picked 15.18 lbs of strawberries. A little less than last years 18.30 lbs. We discovered that the berries weren't as big as last year, and while there were plenty to pick they weren't as ready as last year. There also wasn't as many strange looking ones as last year. If you recall last years jam post there was the picture of all the weird shaped berries. We started making the jam about 6pm and finished about 9:15pm. It seemed to go pretty fast, but we figured that was probably because there wasn't five of us sharing the sink, stove, measuring cups, etc. We cleaned the berries, mashed the berries, mixed them with sugar, added the pectin, and repeated over and over. We ended up doing a great job of multi-tasking as we made the jam. Once the mashed berries and sugar are mixed it's supposed to sit about 10 minutes, so during that time we cleaned and mashed more berries, and boiled the pectin. We managed to time it all really good.

It felt really good to get it done and now the freezer is stocked with homemade strawberry jam for another year! We even remembered to add the pectin to all the batches this year! After about three hours of work I ended up with 25 containers. More overall than last year (the count was 24 last year), but this year I used more smaller containers instead of the larger ones. I discovered that the smaller ones stack better in the freezer and I like to take out a fresh batch more often than trying to use up a big container. So here's the finished product!


Sorry, the picture is a little crappy. I took it with my phone. It's the only picture of the night I took this time around. I didn't have my camera when we picked and I didn't take a picture of all the berries after I picked them. Oh well. I'm sure I'll have plenty of jam to last another year since I was trying to get rid of some before I made the new batches up. So while I'm not giving ALL my jam away, I may be able to spare some here and there this time around too!

Click here for the Strawberry Jam Recipe

Hopefully I'll be back to continue with the vacation blogging, as I'd like to get it wrapped up in the next few days so I can get back to the current events at the Shearwater Nest!