Time To Make The Jam Again

Here it is the end of June, and it wasn't until about two weeks ago that I realized it's time to make the jam again for the next year. This month flew by and we've been so busy that it sort of slipped my mind. With everyone's busy schedules, just Liana and I made jam this year. Actually Elizabeth who has made jam in the past with us grew her own strawberries and made jam already. So the best day that worked the same for Liana and I was last Sunday. Greg's mom watched the kids for me so I could go pick berries and make jam.

Liana and I headed out about 10am to pick berries. Once again we went to Felzke Farms in DeWitt. I was glad that we went early because the weather was absolutely perfect. The sun was out, but it wasn't too hot yet. Once out in the fields we discovered that the berries were few and far between. There were a lot of smashed strawberries as well as bug eaten berries. This year we were a little later than in the past years, and a few days later sure made a difference. It was a good thing it was only Liana and I because the selection of strawberries to choose from weren't that great. We made a mental note to make sure we get out there earlier next year. The 20th-23rd of June seems to be the best couple of days to pick. It ended up taking us a little longer than we thought it would since we had to go up and down the aisles searching for the good berries. I knew I wasn't going to pick as much this year because I still have some jam left from last year. A little more than in previous years. With the slim pickings though, it worked out good to pick less. I ended up picking just over 10lbs of strawberries. Liana picked about 13lbs, 10 lbs for her and 3 lbs for her sister-in-law. Here's the berries we ended up with. Mine are on the left.


We headed back to Liana's to make the jam. It only took us a couple hours to make the jam. It went pretty fast since we didn't pick the normal 15 lbs we usually do, and there was only two of us making it this year. I ended up making eight batches this year, which is eight boxes of pectin and about 10lbs of sugar. Here's the link to the recipe again strawberry freezer jam. That gave me 18 containers of jam. I forgot to take a picture of the containers before I put them in the freezer. Instead of hauling them all back upstairs to the kitchen counter for a picture, you're going to get a crappy picture I snapped in the basement on top of the freezer.


Not the greatest picture, but at least you can see the jam I made. So another year of jam making is in the books, and we've got a nice supply to last us until next June!