June and July, how they fly

I make up blog posts in my head. This generally happens while I'm puttering on something -- picking berries alone, picking beans, cooking, and the only drawback to this is that moving the post from my head to the computer is often not done.

And thus, the portmanteau post. Imagine gorgeous, reflective prose about each of these events. Instead of the long, thoughtful disquisition on patience, and ripeness, and busyness, and preserving moments in jam jars, I give you annotated pictures.

June starts birthdays. Denise got a chocolate-peanut-butter triple layer cake, smuggled to the park in a box for surprising purposes.

Somebody turned eight in July -- and her strawberry cream cake, from Cook's Illustrated, was made with two days' worth of homegrown Tristar berries. Not only did it feed family, friends, and cousins, but some of us may have had slices for breakfast the following day(s). Ahem.

Ignoring the fact that the Blenheim apricot trees are simply loaded for bear, and I'm going to have to figure out how to manage thirty or so pounds of apricots, I ordered some cases of peaches to can. Ellie loves, loves, loves, canned peaches, and I told myself, "How hard can it be?"

 Equipment gathered and canning stations readied, the first day, when I had help, the peaches weren't ripe. Denise and Kevin and I went berry picking and made jam instead. The blackberries on the next island over from us seem to be three distinct varieties.

The little round ones are arranged on sprays of stems -- they remind me of fireworks. Lots of them, and they ripen all at once on a branch. They taste the least sweet. The middle ones have leaves that always look utterly blighted, but they taste good and I think they might be boysenberries. The right ones are classic Himalaya blackberries -- syrup-sweet, but only one or two ripen on a cluster at once. We get lots of those. They also grow in rather distinct bands along the fence. This is my regular picking area, so I spend a lot of time cataloging the patterns of growth and ripeness. This year is a Very Good Year for berries, what with late rain and lots of heat.

The day after next, they were. I rearranged all of the items.

 

And got to work. Blanching, peeling, splitting, protecting against browning, heating in light syrup, canning, filling, and finally processing in the pressure canner for three cases took me much of a day. Fortunately, I had my niece and nephews as company, too. They would have preferred that I play with them or watch them play, but perseverance was the day's watchword.

As I was staggering around wondering if it was, in the end, worth it, and whether or not I was just being weird and privileged and kind of obnoxious for actually buying organic peaches to can, instead of just buying stupid jars of peaches if the kid wanted them, I noticed the variety.

Hmphf.

Today, Denise and I decided that another trip to the berry patch was in order. Jam is always a good thing, right? We picked 32 cups of berries in about two hours. It will be the work of much self-control for me not to go tomorrow too. Maybe I'll post a general "Go and get those berries" notice somewhere, just to feel like they're not going to waste.

Since it was late, three batches of jam-destined berries are macerating under plates in the basement. One bowl is sitting in the kitchen, and one bunch just got cut into in this format

 

 The boy and girl tell me it's tasty. I was waiting for two things. One, for it to cool, and two, for the Frangipane and Apricot Tart to come out of the oven and be dessert for me.

 

 Apparently freezing or jamming or canning isn't the only thing I can do with them.

I can now get to the old news

Someone at our house turned six. . . it doesn't seem quite fair that only one person has a summer birthday, so that all of that delicious fruit is available to party with. I guess the rest of us could celebrate halves or quarters.


I might have asked this one if she could, pretty please, stay five. I even might have offered up her three siblings' advancing ages in trade, promising to not fret about them getting older.

I was rebuffed.

Instead, we made fruit faces. This one is Mikey with a raspberry tongue hanging out of his mouth.


While the youngest was doing her best to stop staying young, the eldest was in Minnesota, helping her team win the National title for the Youth Club Championship Ultimate Frisbee, mixed division.


If you don't know about Ultimate, there's a fact sheet here that might convert you. Sarafina sounds a little like Lloyd Dobbler in "Say Anything" talking about "Kick-boxing, sport of the future" when she dreams of a time when Ultimate is an Olympic sport. Watching video of just the winning point doesn't capture the intensity of a whole game, let alone a championship tournament. I only wish I'd been able to go to Minnesota to help out.

And in the garden, one type of the beans brought from Italy had dried and are ready for threshing. The crew bagged them and we'll stomp on them this week, I think.


Tor is pretty well-trained. When in the garden, check for big zucchini. He's a good zucch picker.



The pole beans were big enough to try as shell beans, but I've only seen this kind of thing on favas before. On the left is them fresh out of the pods and boiled; on the right is them with the thick skin slipped off. The very young ones were sweet, kind of like edamame, and the larger ones were more starchy, like favas. Both good. Now I'm wondering what I'll do with the dried ones. Anyone who uses favas for soup have any information? Drying them was my intention.


And thanks to my friend Susan, whom I do not see enough, we have bee suits for all:


I'm getting to the place that I can't lift heavy supers or deeps down easily, not since hurting my shoulder moving that chicken coop. Eric, however, can. He insisted that we get pictures of him helping. I think we look like a family of marauding polar bears.

Even though baby bear had enough pretty early -- the hive was, not exactly agressive, but definitely unhappy-sounding -- the biggest hive was compacted down to two deep boxes and I think three supers, one fresh for filling. This is done by removing the frames that don't have brood in them -- drone brood got fed to the chickens -- and repacking them so that each box has four frames of food and six frames of brood. There were a dozen good brood frames and I'm pleased with the hive's health.

I shouldn't have to mess with the brood nest again this season, except to make certain that they have adequate stores at the very end. I'll keep back some frames of pollen and honey in the freezer just in case they need supplementing.

And while you can't see her, we saw the queen. Ellie managed to get her covered up by Eric's finger, I think. Bad camera, too. It's very frustrating. Edited to add: No, she's right there. Fingertip, bees, space, queen. She has a little white dot on her back. Drrrr.
Anyhow, she still looks pretty good, her tiny dot of paint is still visible, although to my credit, I noticed her by her movements first. That's when you know you're making progress. I also remembered to take out my contacts so I could see eggs close up over the tops of my glasses. That's when you know you're aging.


Yesterday was ridiculous -- two trips to dental professionals so that they could hurt Ellie (who has inherited the same bowlegged-cowboy roots to teeth from her dad as her older sister); two trips to grocery stores in between to get ingredients and soft foods; two batches of jam made with Denise and our friend Erika while the children rolled around the house; two dinners of turkey pot pie assembled and one baked; two online classes to set up and oversee. I was actually a bit tired and I didn't get any of the housecleaning except sweeping and dishes done that I'd hoped to do. Nor buy books for Oldest Child's upcoming semester. Argh. Well, today is another day.

Microbrew

Sometimes jam making is about, well, making jam. Making jam for toast, for the "Mommy, I'm hungry. I want a peanut butter and jam sandwich," times, for thumbprint cookies if you're lucky, and so the larder shelves reflect orderly, jewel-toned preparation for the future.

Then there are times to capture an essence, a moment, or a tiny, perfect harvest. This is the total yield from one day's picking of "Tristar" strawberries, made with Christiane Ferber's three-day Mes Confitures method. Concentrated sunshine, just enough for very special giving.

Marmaladies

Every single time I walked past my wonderful, abundant, takes-what's-dished-out-and-keeps-producing lime tree for the past month, I've felt guilty. "Got to make marmalade," I'd mutter to myself, and then not do it.

Thank goodness for friends with agendas. I have one, and marmalade was on her agenda. She brought blood oranges, enthusiasm, sugar, and a willingness to do a fast dish turnaround. I brought limes and canning kettles.


We only made something like 7 or 8 pints of each type and didn't reduce lime mountain


too much.

If you look close, there's an intrepid mountaineer:


I'm going to have to give some limes away. I'm not preserving many, I don't think, although I might make another batch or two of the marmalade. I like it, although I'm not eating any sugar right now, it would make dynamite gifts (or cookie filling).

Denise came over with her little one. Remember newborn fuzzy ears? She is certainly as delicious as any marmalade.

Just Can't Stop

"We're jammin'
To think that jammin' was a thing of the past;
We're jammin',
And I hope this jam is gonna last."

Apparently I can't stop. The fruit flies are back, and our neighbor keeps dropping off bags of fruit.


Denise helped me turn fruit fly bait into Cinnamon Vanilla Nectarine-Peach jam last night.


Indeed, we are jammin'.

Maybe I should stop now

In between regular life today, 27 half pints and two six ounce jars of jam got made. Almost two gallons of plum, plum with Ollalieberries, and Ollalieberries with plum, and much of my holiday gifting is taken care of.

Even so, I don't think I can eat enough toast before next year's jam season. Nor can I shove enough PB&Js off on my children. I'm going to have to deal with the siren call of the blackberries in some other way.

I wonder if I could can pie filling.

Food all day long

Not that I ate all day long (although I made two trips to a new cafe in town, and enjoyed both thoroughly) but all day seemed to be about food and its preservation.

Esperanza and I picked berries -- so much fun! Then I made 6 half pints of peach jam with some freestone peaches a neighbor dropped off. While I was making, the girls were cutting Principe Borghese tomatoes to put in the oven to dry. After that, afternoon lessons and running around, and when I got home, Sarafina read aloud from a library book to her father and I. Boy, was that a treat. We laughed and laughed.

After a quick dinner, I got myself back into my increasingly-trashed kitchen, and made three jars of straight blackberry jam, four pints of peach salsa, and chopped and froze some hot peppers that were sitting around not doing anything. Sorry the picture is so sad; it's my bedtime.


I'm getting just the least bit tired of making jam, but I'm enjoying the rest of it. That's a good thing, as I have Saturday set aside to can tomatoes. Better make sure I have enough lids ready to go!

Cherry Days

Partly in honor of our mother's visit, and partly to celebrate the local harvest possibilities, we took our kids plus one

out to a nearby town to pick cherries yesterday. Fortunately for us, the weekend's heat spike had been replaced by more seasonable weather, so it was just hot out there, not "blistering."


In what seemed like a very limited time, we picked well over 20 pounds of lovely early sweet cherries.
Those who didn't pick found plenty to occupy their time. After all the cherries had been picked, all the older kids had been annoyed by younger ones, nearly everyone had eaten too many cherries, and we were wiped out, we headed back home.


There they got sorted into "use immediately," "will keep longer" and "make into jam" piles. Denise called to ask how I processed them and I made a plug for processing them by putting them into the stomachs of our neighbors. That's one of my favorite approaches to bounty.

I finally got a chance to try something from Mes Confitures, and made a discovery. The very thing that makes the recipes annoying to me in general -- their rather "puttery" nature -- is perfect for the kind of exhaustion following a hot day out with lots of family. I chopped and macerated, smashed and simmered and popped a piece of parchment on top and then the mixture and I went to bed in our respective places.

After Eric left for work, but before anyone else was fully functional (thank you, Fed Ex, for calling my house twice at 6:20 am), I had the jam processed and the jars cooling. We'll see how they taste.

Homestead Roundup

Two of the turkeys are toms. They stamp their turkey feet, spread their impressive tails, and show off. The hen just sort of peeps forlornly and wanders off. But really, the toms have faces that only a hen could love, I assume. They're not going to get more beautiful, either. I still kind of like them.

Hen face:

The middle Things are greatly enjoying their kung fu classes. I'd heard good things about this studio, in terms of the interaction between the instructors and students, and I'm a believer now. Enthusiastic, truly loving in the way they expect only the best from their students, and inspiring.

I watched one of the young instructors jump and throw a roundhouse kick above his head yesterday. And I thought, the way I do when I see dancers, "I wish my body could do that."

The kids want to get their hands on the weapons on the wall. I can only assume that they will, and you know? I'm pretty okay with it.

I declared a holiday from schoolwork on Tuesday and my sister and I went out to the berry patch for a soulful goodbye. It might not be our actual last picking, but the berries are showing signs of wear. The last hot spell turned many into dried out bits of former goodness, and the production cycle is slowing down -- not very many blossoms anymore.

But we got enough to finish off our season, and tried out some new recipes back at home. As I carried full boxes of jam downstairs, I felt a sense of bittersweet closure. As sure as the yoke for the Cobblestone sweater is growing, cold weather is coming and this years' fruit crop will end. But I can breathe in the sweetness that was this summer every time I open a jar.

16 cups

. . . or maybe 18. At any rate, enough for three full batches of blackberry jam. And the price? Free, well, except for the slashed hands from huge thorns and the whining perpetrated by children who don't love berry picking as much as their mother and aunt. We walked to the first patch.


I kept thinking, "A woman's reach should exceed her grasp, else what's a berry patch for?" and then realized I'd feel like an idiot if I fell face-first into a thorny bush on a fairly busy street.

It wasn't as full of berries as I'd hoped. So, after getting everything we could reach, we headed out to a soccer field we remembered as having lots of berries last year. This year? It was better. By standing on a metal trash can, my sister and I could reach the fat, thumb-sized berries. Talk, talk, talk, pick, pick, pick. We share enough brain to mean that when one of us says, "Now, Sal" to the reaching-for-a-berry-in-the-bowl child, the other one says, "Mother wants to can the berries for winter," and we dissolve in laughter while the child stalks off in high dudgeon.


Best quote of the day was when my sister said, "If we get stuck in the woods, we eat Thing 2 first," because she was whining so actively.

We may actually go back in a week for more. "Too much" and "blackberries" don't actually work together for me. Maybe this time we'll do it solo. It might be worth paying Miguel the Wonder Sitter for some peace and quiet. I wonder if he'll take jam as payment?


This is the jam hoard before the jars of blackberry. There's yellow plum, red plum, strawberry, and a couple of precious ollalieberry jars. Every once in a while, a child will insist that we have "enough" jam, and I stop to think. Am I being crazy about making jam? Every time I see a glut of fruit, I think, "Preserve it!" so there definitely is a bit of knee-jerking going on. But it's more than that. In these jars, I see a Christmas free of shopping either online or out in the world; I see ounces of summer sunshine vacuum-sealed under a two-piece lid; I see something done ourselves instead of shipping it out to a company "out there;" I hear me saying, "Go downstairs and pick a jar" to a child when we've scraped the last of the open jar onto some homemade toast.

Not infrequently at all, when I'm buying yet another dozen jars, someone will stop me and ask me if I'm making jam. "Why yes," I answer, and usually can't help myself, adding, "It's really easy and fun." Most times I get some variation on why the person can't, and how much they wish they could.

I feel like a member of a secret underground society -- those who read the recipes in the pectin boxes! And I get kind of sad. I know I tend to jump right into things, but come on, people, it's jam, not home appendectomy! There are even classes if you're into being taught things that people used to just do. [Wonder if they'd hire me to teach home bread baking -- strangers often act like I'm a Dark Arts practitioner when they hear I make bread.]

Generally, I'm a really optimistic person. And I don't know where the world as a whole is going right now, although it seems to be heading for some difficult times. I just have a pretty strong feeling that I'm not going to be as much of an outlier, jam-wise, in the coming years.

I just hope there's room on the soccer field for me then.

Nope, I'm still not an introvert

Four pounds' worth of jam into the 25 pounds of plums the middle children and I picked today, I realized that making jam alone isn't as much fun as doing it with someone else.

I'm cooking the rest down and saving it until later.

"Pop! Pop!"

That sound is coming, intermittently, from my kitchen. My sister came over today and in a few hours we produced strawberry, ollalieberry, and plum jams. Each one was, in its own way, an experiment, and we tried making the strawberry with honey, not sugar. It tastes better over yogurt than I expect it will on toast. It's a good thing she and I move well together, since at one point she was stirring lentil soup with her left hand, plum puree with her right, and I was filling and wiping jars from another pot of puree.

We tried to get pictures, really we did, but the back up camera is on the blink also. My real and much-liked camera should come home this week.

At church today, I noticed that the yellow plum tree is dropping gallons of plums. We may have to bike over there tomorrow and give it a little shake -- the woman who usually makes jam for church sales said the fruit was too high for her. I thought of my little climbers . . . not too high for them!

We didn't quite make the math work, but both of us figured that even with sugar and pectin and jars, free, probably-not-sprayed fruit was cheaper in the long run than buying it. And we do love to make jam. Throwbacks, both of us. Whoopie!