Canning Roughing It

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve become a pretty persistent wild strawberry picker. I wouldn’t normally devote much time to picking these teeny little berries that are usually few and far apart, but this summer I’ve found a couple fruitful strawberry patches where the fruit is fairly concentrated and the berries are bigger than I’ve ever seen a wild strawberry before: about the size of a Gobstopper. On an average evening of picking, I come home with about a cup of berries. Still, picking wild strawberries involves a fair amount of ditch diving – that is, squatting along the side of gravel roads, pawing through strawberry foliage – before you’ve gathered enough berries to amount to anything.

I read a local cookbook this spring that put the crazy idea of making wild strawberry jam into my head and I’ve been diligently gathering strawberries to make a batch. Then, at some point this week, the magic berry switch must have been flicked. Suddenly ripe raspberries and blueberries are popping up all over to join the strawberries. By Friday it was becoming apparent that it was time to finish up with the my putzy wild strawberry jam project so I could devote my full attention to the raspberries and blueberries (aka, the big guns).

Yes, I realize that making wild strawberry jam sounds pretty idealistic when you live in a cabin in the woods. Since today I headed into town to use my mother’s canning equipment to make my strawberry jam, I thought I’d share how you too can make strawberry jam.

Step 1) Pick as many wild strawberries as you possibly can. This is a project to spread out over several days as you’ll probably spend more time searching for berries than actually picking. (I froze my berries while I waited to accumulate enough for jam.)

Step 2) Once you've got a big bag full, mash up all your wild strawberries and see what it amounts to. (As of last night I had a 3 ½ cups of mashed wild strawberries. I needed 5 cups for a batch of cooked strawberry jam.)

Step 3) Go to the grocery store and buy a couple pints of strawberries. After all, you have a full time job and a grand opening at work in a week. And if you keep squatting on the side of the road with a berry basket, soon or later, you’ll get hit. And are you really sure you haven’t been picking berries on private property?!

Step 4) Cook your jam according to the Sure-Jell package directions.

Step 5) Admire your rows of jam.

So maybe not totally “Little House in the Big Woods” style, but still, homemade jam is homemade jam, even if my wild strawberry jam is slightly domesticated.

Don’t worry, I do have some standards. After I finished up with the strawberry jam this afternoon, I chopped up all the homegrown rhubarb that’s been hanging out in our fridge to make a batch of rhubarb marmalade.

Of course, the secret ingredient to make rhubarb marmalade set is Strawberry Jell-O.

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How Many Hands Does It Take To Put Up Siding?

Apparently six.

By the middle of last week, Andy’d reached the point in the shed project that it was time to deal with the siding. The floors were in. The walls were up and square. And according the carpentry expert down the road, it made the best sense to put up the siding before dealing with the roof.

So Andy and I headed out back to hang some siding. The only issue was that T1-11 siding is really much heavier than it appears. Also, when you have a short ladder that just barely allows you to peep over the top of the wall, it doesn’t work so well to have someone peeping over the top attempting to see if the piece of siding is square while the other person crouches on the ground, turning red in the face, trying to support the piece of siding and make the necessary adjustments to get the siding on straight. There was complaining, bickering, frustration, and in the end, defeat.

What to do . . . . what to do?

The good thing about staying in your hometown is that there’s usually an extra pair of hands around. Yesterday, Andy’s cousin came over and between the three of us, we got two walls done. Only two more walls, a window, a door and a roof and we’ll have a shed!

Happy Solstice! We had the most exquisite long summer day yesterday: blue skies, a touch of breeze, no humidity. The garden loved it!

Today, the official kickoff of summer as far as the calendar’s concerned, is overcast and humid. Rain seems imminent and although the rain will keep from weeding the garden, it also means we won’t have to water.

In truth, as another blogger pointed out this morning, it’s not really the start of summer: it’s midsummer. It does feel much more like the middle of summer. Yesterday, after the siding success, we sat on the deck talking for a bit and realized that July 4th, that unofficial mark of summer’s halfway point, is nearly upon us. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: July 4th is the grand opening at work. The next two weeks will be the last big push there while the second half of summer this year promises to be more orderly and relaxed.

I put in a half day at work today, which got me home and fed before three. It’s going to be a busy week on the work front and I’m trying to avoid overtime. I may have to head over to work every day this week, but at least that means I have a little more time at home each day too.

I should do dishes, but I think I’m off to hunt for wild strawberries before the rain reaches us.

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