Yesterday Was Perfect
The boys and I drove up to Apple Hill to Patrick’s Berry Farm yesterday. We picked berries for about an hour or so on a sunny hillside surrounded by conifers. Finally, I understand why specialty seed and flower catalogues offer blackberry plants for sale! When berries are grown deliberately and orderly rows, trained on four-foot high fences, and trimmed so that the fruit can actually be harvested, they’re freakin’ wonderful! The plants weren’t dense and overgrown as they are growing wild along the American river (or as a nuisance to be erradicated in your backyard)–you know, so you can see the lovely black berries dangling on their stems but can’t possibly reach them without lacerating the hell out of your hands and arms. Until yesterday, that was my only experience of picking berries! We picked marionberries (a variety of blackberries) and boysenberries. We sampled New Zealand thornless blackberries, which were beautiful and truly thornless, but not as sweet as the marionberries we found up the hill.
We picked 4.5 pounds of berries, and bought pectin and citric acid powder, too, when we paid for them. Then we had lunch at a local tavern and headed back down the hill, wondering if we were actually clever enough to make jam. Ian and Lucas bought 16-oz. jelly jars.
The berry farm gives away a jam recipe for free. So we bravely tried it. I had always thought that jam making was one of those totally-not-worth-the-hassle endeavors. Something too complicated that would take several days, make the kitchen unusable, etc. Not so! Within two hours, we had four jars of jam (about 54 ounces, I guess; the fourth jar wasn’t full) in the water bath bubbling away. Lucas helped with mashing the berries and stiring the sugar in. Ian headed up the project and it was marvelous.
The jam cooled overnight. We opened the not-full jar this morning. The seal was good. The jam’s color is beautiful–deepest red-black. It’s full of merry berry pips. It smells delightful, spreads just as it should, and tastes divine. It was a low-sugar recipe, so the jam is very fruity and not too sweet.
I’m torn between the idea of giving away two jars and hording it all for ourselves. What a great experience! We got to do something totally new and had such fun in the process. I feel like we earned beaucoup Waldorf points yesterday. Makes me want to go back and do it all again before summer’s over.
July 2, 2007 at 6:38 pm
MMmmm! I’m so jealous! We used to grow boysenberries in our back yard when I was growing up and my mom would spend an afternoon making dozens of jars of Boysenberry jam, preserves, and what have you. There’s nothing as great as breaking the seal on a new jar of homemade jam and spreading it on some lovely home made bread. I may have to find a place to get fresh berries in the desert (might as well ask for fresh fish while I’m at it :/) and take on the project. Thanks for the blast from my childhood!
July 2, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Oooo! That sound wonderful! If you guys make it back up let me know if you would like company for the expedition, I think that the kids would love it.
Can you please share the Jam recipe?
~Janise~