This week at Mystic Cedars was all about canning. Wednesday I put up 14 jars of plum jam. We have an enormous and ancient yellow plum tree in the far back. Its about 30 feet tall and all the plums are on the top. This year Jimmy rigged a tall pole with a bucket attached to it and we managed to get enough plums to make jelly from it. This is both a happy and a sad thing. For the last three years we have been sharing the property with the worlds oldest, smartest and most industrious Squirrel. He was here when we moved in and I have spent the last three years yelling at him, cursing him and throwing pine cones at him. Every year he has decimated the hazelnut crop, eaten all the cherries, gobbled the few pears that we can get to grow and stolen all the apples. His treatment of the plum tree was special though. As soon as the plums would start to get ripe he would run through the tree pulling off the plums, biting off the newly ripening tips and then throw them on the ground. By the time the plums should have been ripening for harvest ....they were all gone. This year the highest plums on the tree are still there because Grandfather Squirrel was the victim of a four wheeled demon. We found him, a few weeks ago, in the road by the mailbox. A moment of silence please.
I find myself missing him. It was highly entertaining watching him torture the cats by catapulting fruit at them from whatever tree they were sleeping under. He mocked the dog for being smaller than himself and stole the chicken feed right in front of the roosters that chased him around the yard. He was annoying, intrepid and took extreme delight in being a squirrel.
All that said.... because of his demise... I actually have a fruit harvest this year. Such as it is thanks to weeks of no rain and uber dry conditions. Now I have to can it all.
It was way to hot in July to spend hours in an already sweltering kitchen, made it even hotter by boiling fruit, so all of this years raspberries went into the freezer.
Friday I pulled them out and strained out all the seeds and yesterday Baby Sis showed up with five gallons of strained blackberries. I felt somewhat under achieved because I only had two and half gallons of raspberry and salmon berry juice. Baby Sis arrived at 7:30 in the morning (before I had even finished my first of coffee) full of energy and enthusiasm for the project. I should have been suspicious then but I wasn't awake enough yet to see where it was going. By nine am the jars were sterilized and ready for the first batch. The first three or four hours were full of fun and tasty delights as we sampled spoonful after spoonful of our amazing jellied creations. After 50 or so jars of jelly, I was ready to call it quits . I wanted to water bath what we had and stare admiringly at the pristine jars of jelly as we listened for the telltale pop of the sealing jar lids but Baby Sis set her jaw in that way she does when she is determined and said " NO... we are not stopping. We still have fruit and we still have sugar!" (at this point she hugged and caressed what was left of the 25 pound bag of sugar sitting on the counter). Fortunately, I recognize a genetic predisposition when I see one. Especially when evidenced by a close family member. I saw it in her eyes. There was no stopping this warrior matron. She was on a mission. And she wasn't letting me stop either (no matter how I begged). Not until the last grain of sugar was gone. At 4:30 I sighed with relief as we put the first jars in the water bather. (Just a quick FYI for other jelly and pickle makers. If you write on top of the jar lids in a sharpie permanent marker before you water bath.... the writing does not come off in the boiling hot water. Which is a good thing.) While the first batch was water bathing we did the count. 88 jars of jelly. Yes! We learned that 6 gallons of fruit juice and 25 pounds of sugar makes 88 jars of jelly! Now... maybe its because I was so DONE with jelly making by the end of the day or maybe something magical really did happen but, 88 seems like such a mystical number. Maybe there is magic in those jars! Or maybe we should have stopped at 50. I don't know...but it was a fun day with Baby Sis.
What happened to the last two and a half gallons of fruit juice ? It was all blackberry. It was all strained and it was the rightful property of Baby Sis. But, every time I looked at it, I could almost taste the blackberry wine that I could make out of it! It took half the afternoon to talk her into giving me 2 of the 2 and a half gallons (I could not reasonably ask for all of it...that would have been selfish). For those of you who have never done it. Straining out 2 full gallons of blackberries is a lot of work. A LOT! So, the only reason anyone would give up that much prepared blackberry juice would be sisterly love! ....or maybe it was my promise to give her half of the finished product ;).
I find myself missing him. It was highly entertaining watching him torture the cats by catapulting fruit at them from whatever tree they were sleeping under. He mocked the dog for being smaller than himself and stole the chicken feed right in front of the roosters that chased him around the yard. He was annoying, intrepid and took extreme delight in being a squirrel.
All that said.... because of his demise... I actually have a fruit harvest this year. Such as it is thanks to weeks of no rain and uber dry conditions. Now I have to can it all.
It was way to hot in July to spend hours in an already sweltering kitchen, made it even hotter by boiling fruit, so all of this years raspberries went into the freezer.
Friday I pulled them out and strained out all the seeds and yesterday Baby Sis showed up with five gallons of strained blackberries. I felt somewhat under achieved because I only had two and half gallons of raspberry and salmon berry juice. Baby Sis arrived at 7:30 in the morning (before I had even finished my first of coffee) full of energy and enthusiasm for the project. I should have been suspicious then but I wasn't awake enough yet to see where it was going. By nine am the jars were sterilized and ready for the first batch. The first three or four hours were full of fun and tasty delights as we sampled spoonful after spoonful of our amazing jellied creations. After 50 or so jars of jelly, I was ready to call it quits . I wanted to water bath what we had and stare admiringly at the pristine jars of jelly as we listened for the telltale pop of the sealing jar lids but Baby Sis set her jaw in that way she does when she is determined and said " NO... we are not stopping. We still have fruit and we still have sugar!" (at this point she hugged and caressed what was left of the 25 pound bag of sugar sitting on the counter). Fortunately, I recognize a genetic predisposition when I see one. Especially when evidenced by a close family member. I saw it in her eyes. There was no stopping this warrior matron. She was on a mission. And she wasn't letting me stop either (no matter how I begged). Not until the last grain of sugar was gone. At 4:30 I sighed with relief as we put the first jars in the water bather. (Just a quick FYI for other jelly and pickle makers. If you write on top of the jar lids in a sharpie permanent marker before you water bath.... the writing does not come off in the boiling hot water. Which is a good thing.) While the first batch was water bathing we did the count. 88 jars of jelly. Yes! We learned that 6 gallons of fruit juice and 25 pounds of sugar makes 88 jars of jelly! Now... maybe its because I was so DONE with jelly making by the end of the day or maybe something magical really did happen but, 88 seems like such a mystical number. Maybe there is magic in those jars! Or maybe we should have stopped at 50. I don't know...but it was a fun day with Baby Sis.
What happened to the last two and a half gallons of fruit juice ? It was all blackberry. It was all strained and it was the rightful property of Baby Sis. But, every time I looked at it, I could almost taste the blackberry wine that I could make out of it! It took half the afternoon to talk her into giving me 2 of the 2 and a half gallons (I could not reasonably ask for all of it...that would have been selfish). For those of you who have never done it. Straining out 2 full gallons of blackberries is a lot of work. A LOT! So, the only reason anyone would give up that much prepared blackberry juice would be sisterly love! ....or maybe it was my promise to give her half of the finished product ;).
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