Thursday, July 8, 2010

Blackberry Picking and Jam

We had enough ripe blackberries to do our first picking and we got a couple gallons. There are still many more berries than we picked in various stages of ripening so we will hit it again next week. We got up at 06:30 to beat the heat and humidity and hit all 10 or 11 of our berry patches. An unexpected bonus was that now that the hay is cut we were able to make a closer inspection of our fence lines and found an old peach tree covered in peaches so we now have 2 trees that we know of. We used the dogs for snake screening and had a pretty fun morning even though we got into some thistles and got the thistle burn...next time long sleeves.
The berries were all sweet, juicy and plentiful. The rains we are now getting after a month of drought are really increasing the harvest possibilities.

Our fence rows are generally coverd with blackberry bushes as well as around the two ponds.

We saw a lot of huckleberries too which should begin to ripen in August.

We made 18 pints of jam and still froze about a gallon of berries for later use (I'm thinking cobler myself)

Some of the jam we canned. We made sweetend with sugar and unsweetened with just unsweetened apple juice for sweetener. They both taste great.

Tomorrow we try..ketchup.

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