Monday, August 10, 2009

gathering

I really seem to have fallen behind in blogging lately. Summer is happening, kids are as busy as ever and so am I, work is crazy, and in between I'm trying to keep the house in some semblance of order. But last Sunday, the wild raspberries were calling me, and I spent all morning crawling through brambles picking the tiny, juicy, sweet as summer berries.

I didn't have to go too far from home. Since our riding mower died a couple of years ago, large areas of our land have gone unmowed, and raspberries are one of the first plants to take over. They produce fruit in their second year, so while in other years we have had a few berries here and there, this year we;ve had enough to make it worthwhile to spend some time picking.

I ended up with about half an ice cream pail's worth, which was enough for four half pint jars of jam, which I made last Monday. I also made twelve half pints of strawberry jam from some berries the kids and The Hermit had picked. It was my first canning effort in the new house!

There are more raspberries out there, and I'm hoping to get my hands on some fresh local blueberries, but do I have to say "so much to do, so little time"?

4 comments:

Madcap said...

Deb - it's bad to make me drool in my keyboard!

Elise said...

I love raspberry jam! We have a lot of wild blueberries here in Pennsylvania and I've been picking like a madwoman. I too use those icecream buckets and have probably picked about four bucket loads. Most went right into the freezer but I did make some blueberry crisp and the kids were eating handfuls at a time! I find the picking very peaceful (when I'm not wondering where the momma bear of that cub that ran acrossed the road in front of my van was!!)
Enjoy

Lausten North said...

You did better than we did. And next time I will not wear shorts!

cindy said...

Your house is beautiful! I love those colors. I can smell those raspberries. We would pick lots of them up the Gunflint when we used to pick blueberries. I liked picking raspberries better, the bucket fills up faster! My grandparents had a huge patch of raspberries. I remember hot August days standing in the berry patch eating..I mean picking them for grandma.