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.