We be jammin’!

Hitting into late July and early August, I am thinking that… really, not too much to do around here but watch the garden and the animals grow, and spend some time with great friends and family that come to visit.  It’s a fun time for sure.  However, little known to me, there is an annual ritual that country folks take quite seriously in these parts, that is about to suck us into it’s vortex.  Remember in my last post how I talked about a lot of stuff in the garden becoming ripe all at once?  Well, this phenomenon is back with a vengeance!

Seems some of the local fruit is ripe and if we want to get at any of it, we have to beat the bears to it!  At any moment the bears are going to come out of the woods and start devouring the fruit, so everyone, big and small comes out to gather it all up.  I am sitting in my favorite spot on the back porch soaking up some sun (it was a good week at work so I wasn’t weeding – if this makes no sense to you- read the last post! ) and rocking on my swing.  Next thing I know, Chuck hands me a large bowl and says let’s go – we need to pick the Saskatoon berries!  He tells me he is going to make some jam!  Huh?! Jam? How do you make jam? – and where are we going to pick these berries?   This is all bringing back horrible memories of my mom taking us to a U-Pick farm to pick strawberries.   So I was somewhat less than enthusiastic.  Besides, when has he ever made jam… does he even know the process? the pitfalls?  don’t those jars explode or something??

But I am a good wife (quit laughing!!) so I keep my concerns to myself and cheerfully head out to the blazing hot sunshine to support his efforts at pillaging the local trees of their fruit.  There is an old railway line that used to go by all the houses along here – the rails have long since been removed but the path remains, and you can follow it for miles in either direction. So along the path we go in front of the house to find the Saskatoon berries and hopefully avoid the local bears.  Fun times for sure!  Not only do we have to keep an eye out for those pesky bears who apparently like Saskatoon berries too, but Mother Nature apparently has a sense of humour and has developed berries bushes that look similar – and have similar looking fruit – but one is good and one is bad.  The next 15 minutes is a berry lesson given by my darling husband who very patiently, and at some length, instructs me on how to tell the difference between these two very similar looking plants.  He tells me all about how the Saskatoon berries are sweet and juicy and the bad Hawthorn berries are kinda dry with lots of seeds in it, and how it wouldn’t make very good jam.  I have managed to onboard essentially – Saskatoon trees/berries good, Hawthorn tree/berries bad. How to tell the difference?  Honkin’ big thorns on the Hawthorn – go figure! On my own I figure out that Mother Nature keeps the laughs up by apparently having these two grow close to each other – at least where we are looking.

So I spend the next hour or two wandering down the path – fighting through all the various bushes and grasses growing on the sides of the path to get to a tree with all kinds of lovely berries on it – only to find out it is a Hawthorn tree – big long thorns….bad –  then I find a Saskatoon berry tree tucked behind the damn Hawthorn.  More dicey tromping through the bush to get to the “good” berries… all the while wondering when I am going to find a bear…. which then has me muttering to myself about how piles of bear poo means black bear, and ploppy poo is grizzly… then back to good berries = no thorns….  Honestly, I am getting a little worried that I am adding so much new information that some other important knowledge I have stored in what I am assuming is my colossal brain is gonna fall out!  But hey, jam right?!

Finally Chuck determines that we have enough berries for a great batch of jam.  Frankly I am a little worried about his brain getting over full too, I am sure that I only take in a quarter of what he appears to have researched at length…’cause he has never made jam either, but seems to be pretty confident that he understands the process and has created a recipe.  I have no idea how he does that… but he hasn’t killed me in over 30 years of feeding me, so I don’t question anything too much.  So I take on the role of wing man and I assist with the measuring, dicing, stirring, sterilizing and prepping of the lids and labels while he works his magic cookery voodoo!  Voila!!, 8 hours later we have a table full of jam – Saskatoon/Rhubarb/Vanilla.  That worked out so well that he did Huckleberry/Pear and Blackberry/Cherry Port/Vanilla.   And if you think the people out here were crazy about the Saskatoon berries, you should have seen the craziness once everyone figured out the Huckleberries were ripe…… madness!   Now, what to do with the sour cherries???  I think I heard Darren say something about cider????

But Chuck finished up that jam just in time too.  Shortly after the berries were safely turned into yummy jam, the bear showed up, calmly walked right over our chicken fence, plopped himself down under the apple tree and helped himself to a feed of apples!   Completely ignored the chickens!  Thank heavens for that!   Owl’s Hollow is clearly a great place to just chill!