150

Well, here's the primary driving motive for our recent rash of canning jam this year. It's been a great activity for the three of us, for the teamwork needed to pull it off. The canning continues, too, even though we've met our goal number of 150 4-oz. jars of jam. One of our campgrounds (good ol' Clinton Lake, land of criminals singing into the Quiet Hours and felony banjo) has crab apple trees. The're ripe! So, we are trying some crab apple jelly. I think we're going to have a bit of excess inventory. We haven't hit regular apple season yet, either.

Command Central

We're in the thick of it now. Canning jam. It's not every year we can a lot of jam. Just don't go through it as much as an empty nest. However, our son does raid the jam/jelly stock when he's back home on visits. I like having a reason to can, and having a bumper crop of blackberries is one such reason. The next blog post will tell of another reason. I just like the sights and sounds of the kitchen when it's in production. The stove is Command Central. All the counter tops in arms reach are strategically stocked to feed the canner and to take its output. Then the random sound of popping lids as they cool. It's a flashback to childhood years by Mom's side watching. It's an event.

Fruit of the Land

Fruit time! We have plenty of blackberries now. And two trees of peaches. Kansas peaches. Doesn't have the rich sound of Georgia peaches, but they are ours. These are dwarf fruit trees. We didn't need big ones, just smaller ones to give us some fruit to play with. Right now it seems more like work than play. The blackberry bushes are taking over the world. They sprawl a little more every year. Every three days I go out to pick more. It's been over a week of that, and with the red fruit on the vines it looks like another week of picking. Time to start canning and freezing.