My son: The Destroyer

Yesterday I went with my friend, Erica, my husband, our five kids and three of hers to pick berries. We picked for maybe an hour. My husband watched our twenty-one month old and our three year old picked berries with me, then with her boys, then with me. In case you're wondering, she ate more than she picked and I had to keep putting berries in  her basket. Between my two smallest children they ate at least an entire basket. Needless to say that they didn't eat much lunch when we got home!

I find it difficult to accomplish much when my youngest child, in particular, is awake so I generally wait until he is asleep before I start any projects. My husband made me peanut butter blossoms- my favorite cookie- but then I had to clean up. I was so lazy and ended up procrastinating until 8:00 to even clean the dinner/cookie mess. Unfortunately that meant I had to stay up very late in order to make my jam.

At about 10:00 I start boiling jars and smashing berries- yes, I took my sweet time! My mother in law had also dropped by for about a half hour so that's my excuse ;) Since I try to make the freshest most natural jam possible I have this little quirk: I MUST make my jam the day my berries are picked and I don't use pectin for any of my jams.

So I boiled the jam down to it's gelling point. This is the hardest/most time-consuming part. I think it takes about an hour to get it to right.

Then I remove my jars from the boiling water one at a time and fill them.

I clean the tops and place my lid. The lids have to be prepared before you can put them on, it's not hard, you just soften the rubber seal by soaking them in very hot water.

Meanwhile, as I fill the jars and place the lids I put them back in the pot.

Since I was making Blackberry jam I boiled them for 15 minutes and BOOM! Done! It was midnight before I finally crawled between the sheets, though.

Fast forward to this morning:

Every morning I go out into my back yard and let the chickens out of their hutch(I'm starting to suspect that one of them is a rooster) I hose off the patio because, since they are free-range, they poop on it and then I water my plants. Today My son came out and saw me appraising some of my tomatoes and began picking them. I didn't know he was so efficient! He picked four in a matter of one or two seconds! /sigh I guess I'll be waiting a while longer to have any tomatoes.

I'm really looking forward to making some tomato preserves.

I made jam, jelly, and stewed tomatoes

I'm really working on being self-sufficient. I have my garden, I have my chickens(which have yet to start laying) and now I'm finally getting fruit. I have three types of tomatoes, bell peppers, red bell peppers, pasilla peppers(some of my favorite), jalapenos, Fresno chiles, potatoes, sunflowers that I'm not convinced will mature, tons of Thai basil, some sweet basil, coriander(never again), onions, garlic... I think that's it. Can you tell I like peppers?

OK, with the jam and jelly I must confess, I cheated a little this time... I went to a fruit stand and bought my berries and my jalapenos :) This stand is run by a local family that does virtually everything by hand. I believe that the only thing they use equipment for is plowing.

The fact is: I don't have enough fruit to exclusively use my own. This is my first year with my garden, strawberries don't give enough fruit the first year for one to be truly self sufficient. I had several jalapeno plants at the beginning of the season but they were... removed(refer to previous post about the natural disaster that hit my garden.) I have already pulled one crop of potatoes. It was enough for two meals so that made me pretty happy.

My goal for this year is to get enough jam, jelly, and tomatoes that I don't have to buy any all Winter. Aside from the expense of paying $1.00 a can(if you can find it on sale) I am also concerned about all of the chemicals, be it fertilizer or pesticide, that is used to grow my food. I am also concerned about the fuel that is used in plowing, planting, harvesting, and transporting the food that I eat as well as the packaging, most of with is non-renewable. So, the logical course of action is to plant my own garden and here we are!