< In Full Swing | Main | Progress report >

Farm Girl

Posted at 1:19 AM on June 12, 2008 by Vera Schabicki (3 Comments)

I had the most wonderful day last week, my friends Tammy, Patsy and a very abbreviated list of children and I went strawberry picking at a wonderful Mennonite Farm. The weather here in Mississippi had been really hot and humid so I must admit that I was not looking forward to this outing (I can be a bit negative at times). The day turned out to be breezy and relatively cool with light puffy little clouds in the sky. Tammy wore her bloomers but not her bonnet, she regretted the lack of it as the day wore on (the rest of us had on the usual boring clothes). We had lots of fun conversation(including the question of whether sampling while picking is stealing..........we settled on eating the ones with bugs or damage, after removing the offending portion of course ) and laughter, sore backs and the usual sunburns on the back of the neck. I carried home forty pounds of delicious strawberries.

The kids had the mistaken idea that we could wait and "process" the fruit another day, but a long day of driving and sitting in the back of the mom van had already caused a significant amount of deterioration of our haul.

I have a stack of Kitchen Garden Magazines that my friend Diana gave me and one recipe I had been wanting to try was a for a Sunshine Jam (June/July 1996). I cut up the strawberries and put them in a bowl with some nice fair trade organic sugar, then I set them out in the blazing Mississippi sunshine for a few hours (I will skip the predictably boring details of how my erstwhile farm children abandoned ship and I was still cutting and hulling at a very lonely one in the morning).

Last year I bought a copper Jam pot at Tuesday Morning (hey, it was only $45.00), never mind that I have never in my life made jam, I knew I would get to it someday. So I poured my beautiful Jammy syrup into the pot and cooked it until it thickened (read twice, I forgot to put the (Florida) lemon juice in, oops), and I must say, this was some tasty ,tasty stuff, we couldn't stop eating it was so good, it really tasted like intense sunny sweet summer in a jar.

I had not yet worked up the courage to actually try canning so I plugged in my large chest freezer and stored my really wonderful jam in it (what a wimp).

I gave a Jar to my friend Michele and she was gratifyingly complimentary......whew! I wonder if we will ever have to live only on the fruits of my labour, because honey, we might be going hungry!

Comments (3)

Oh, Kitchen Garden magazine! I loved that magazine, but have not been able to find it. Do they still publish it? Good luck with preserving the strawberries!

Gina

Posted by Gina | June 12, 2008 12:04 PM

This was the best strawberry jam I have ever eaten. My kids and my husband agree, this strawberry jam is so incredibly delicious we are fighting over what remains. Every morning I find the jar on the bottom shelf of the frig and I, everymorning, hide it on the back of the top shelf. This is a challenge since, well, I am only five feet tall. But darn it if those little runts, both under 4 feet tall don't somehow manage to find it again. I dread the day it's empty. Now I know why it tastes so good... one am Vera????? I say the kids shouldn't be allowed to have any more! More for me.

Posted by Michele the Friend | June 18, 2008 10:33 AM

Sounds like our friend in Mississippi could skip the strawberry-cooking and just go straight to the freezer--more like fresh and cooler! I swore off canning in the heat when I was a child.

Posted by Susanne Rupp | June 28, 2008 3:22 PM