For the love of berries

On Thursday we had Aimee and the boys over for breakfast, and then headed out for a day full of strawberries, sun and making jam. We went to a couple local strawberry patches, and I ended up picking 37.5 pounds! The plan was to head back to Aimees after we got done picking, and make the jam. I have only made freezer jam, which is just smoosh, stir, and laddle, so I was a little intimidated by "real" canning. It was actually a lot of fun, and it was great having Aimee there, because she knows everything there is to know about canning and was a great teacher. Because of my obnoxious amount of berries, we only had time for one batch at her place, so I headed home around 530 to get started on my own. I feel like I washed and hulled berries for hours! It was midnight before I got everything "processed". I made 8 pints of strawberry jam, and 3 batches of freezer jam. I also had enough berries to fill two containers in the fridge for snacking, and fill 1 gallon ziploc for the freezer. I also froze two more gallon bags full of berries, to be processed tonight and tomorrow. Tonight I made a batch of strawberry-rhubarb....I am anxious to see how that will turn out! Tomorrow will probably be another batch of freezer jam, maybe strawberry banana, maybe regular...or maybe I will make some homemade strawberry shortcake. YUM! Then in the next couple weeks, raspberries should be coming into season, then blueberries, then pears, peaches and apples.....I feel like a regular suzy homemaker with all this canning and preserving. I love it, and its fun to share the final product with our friends and family!

Here are some pictures of the kids berry picking:

Your never to young to pick berries!

The boys found this rotten stump, and had lots of fun poking and inspecting it. So much fun that Killy insisted I take a picture of it:

Those are the only pictures I managed to get, it was a busy day!