My husband is a jam making machine. Bowl after bowl of berries are picked off cane berry vines or blueberry bushes from our garden and back shrub row!
And oh how we love and appreciate it. A batch is usually about four pint jars. If we have enough, he makes 2 batches after work or on a weekend day. After decades of making regular jam we switched to freezer jam.
We gave up most canning long ago except for making and canning applesauce and that is a chore and a half. But our young grandchildren love it so much and frankly the grown-ups too!
Alaskan company came for a visit this August, all four of my grandchildren came to pick berries and apples and now peaches are ripening as well.
Then there's so much berry picking! We grow strawberries, raspberries, logan berries, Marion berries (kind of an Oregon blackberry mix) and blueberries plus lots of wild blackberries!
Batch after batch after batch of jam! Our little grandchildren eat them off the bush faster than we can pick!
Endless batches of homemade jam by my husband who somehow still works non-stop outside at our home building business, inside with preserving our fruit from shrubs, trees, and vines!
And now, it's apple picking and apple sauce making and preserving time.
Hard, endless spring spring, summer and fall work but oh how delicious it all is!
2 batches preserved by hot water bath canning and 3 jars left out for fresh eating and sharing!
And we've yet to pick our Gravensteins to make apple cider!
Endless mowing of fields and yards to keep our 2 5 acres habitable. It takes a full day in daytime hours to mow with lawnmowers and tractor! And that's from once a week to once over 2 weeks depending on weather and available chore time.
Summer is such a lovely time but far too busy, as well! Time to enjoy the fruits of our labors!
Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting, from my heart and with my hands
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