When I was little I remember picking strawberries and raspberries with Mom in the summer and her making them jam. I actually don't remember picking the berries but I have two very vivid memories of making jam. The first is hanging cheesecloth's full of berries in the shower...letting them drip and drain for I don't even remember how long. I'll have to ask Mom what we were making, because having done it now myself there is exactly ZERO cheesecloth involved....and you WANT all the juice, you aren't draining it. LOL! I'll have to get some clarity on that memory.
The second memory I have about making jam is that we made jars and jars and jars of it and we kept it in the freezer. I remember LOVING the taste of the jam and I have fond memories of that, but what I really remember was the year it went wrong. HA! One year, for some reason the jam didn't set up well. In my memory, it was raspberry jam that didn't work out. I just remember Mom starring into the freezer at jars and jars of "bad" jam and finally saying "Well, it'll be good on ice cream I guess" and closing the freezer, walking away disappointed. HA! No better words to a child's ears, I tell you what.
ANYWAYS, a few years ago when we moved to Marengo I found that there was a local farm stand near our house (in Algonquin) that had strawberry picking and I knew this would be on our summer activity list for sure. Here in the Midwest the strawberry season is pretty short - I'd say 2 weeks is pushing it. It starts in mid June and for the last few years the timing just hasn't worked out for us. We tend to vacation in early to mid June so we were never around to go and pick. Well, fast forward to the year of COVID, and everything being canceled, and well, you know what we finally had time for?! Picking Strawberries.
One HOT summer Friday in June, I grabbed the girls and convinced Erin to come out for the day and we headed to the strawberry patch. Note that we somehow picked the hottest day of the summer so far - it was in the 90's. And of course our timing was bad. I think we showed up around noon - you know, the hottest part of the day. The sun was beating down on us and it was HOTT hot. The kids were generally not impressed with this activity. First I made them walk to the patch, because we didn't want to wait around to ride the crowded wagon (bad choice)...then Hazel immediately had to pee just as we got ourselves set to pick (thank goodness they had a porta potty out there!).
We picked just over 17 lbs of strawberries and it took us just around an hour to fill 4 of these boxes. Picking opened up that Tuesday, so we were lucky to be assigned rows that had not yet been picked over. It went fast in some sections and slow in others. You could tell when you got to the end of the row that the day before people had been picking in the other direction.
Thank goodness I had Erin along to help because the girl's enthusiasm for this event went out the window by the time we'd walked to our rows. Towards the end we were motivating them by "racing" for who could pick 7 more berries the fastest. I even tried bribery (ice cream) to get them to keep picking. Towards the end though, even I was too hot and getting light headed from bending over. If there is one thing we learned for sure, it's that this is HARD, hot, work and we should probably pay field workers more money.
The mental math of how much we needed (of everything) was insane. This year involved a lot of guessing and fast math. We way over picked on the berries, but somehow, despite the fact that we'd never done this, and I had to convert from lbs of strawberries, to quarts, to cups...from tablespoons of sugar to cups to pounds, and so many other math problems in between, somehow as we scooped the last little bit of jam, into the last jar we had exactly (and I mean EXACTLY) what we needed. So, because I'm sure I'll be doing this again next summer, here's some of my notes from this process:
- Yield: 48 jelly jars
- Method: Freezer method
- Boxes of Pectin: 8 (the yellow one - NOT the pink, low sugar one)
- LBS of Sugar: 10 (I know, I know....just ignore that part)
- LBS of Berries: 10 (we picked `7 this year and had way too many....next year pick 10 only - two boxes)
We've shared a few jars with family and friends and guys, it's so good! We used the freezer method because it's fast, and you don't have to boil the jars, and the jam stays a beautiful red color. While I'm certain I have more than enough jam to get us through til next year, I'm also planning to give jars away for Christmas this year. I think it'll make a great add to (hopefully) more honey from my parents!
