Can they be trained to not growl at the guests?

I have so much I want to discuss with you. It has been a maddening week of excavatory literal muckraking, which has left us carrying our avoirdupois in mud every evening. There are stories of something bioluminescent appearing in newly exposed tree roots (Honey Fungus)? There was a mishap with a trailer overloaded with dirt and my asparagus patch (minimal damage). There are garden updates, including an obdurate determination to give life to a melon and the revelation that I might, in fact, die trying. If Time ever deigns to hike up the mountain, I’ll tell you about all of these things.

In the meantime, I’m going to talk about strawberries. Specifically, I want to talk about strawberry jam. And even more specifically, I want to talk about the fact that I made some. And if I want to zoom in so far that each pixel vaguely resembles a marching band of black ants waiting for their footwork break, I want to talk about the fact that I made strawberry jam outside.

And if there’s any reason to live the way I’m living, it’s to be able to do just this.

I’m a neophytic canner and food preserver, and don’t want to turn this into a Recipe Blogh for fear that I’ll suggest something that might kill you, but noting those disclaimers, please enjoy

 

Cooter Hollow’s Complete Guide to Outdoor Strawberry Jamming

Step 1> Pick a bunch of strawberries. If you’re like me, you’ll take one of your favorite Small People as your picking companion, ensuring that you only return with half of the berries you picked. So pick enough so that by the time you return home, you’ve still got at least fifteen pounds or so of berries, and a backseat stained with berry blood.

Step 2> Wait two days before you start to can them, because you’ve got so much else going on, between the excavator and the little people and q.v. the first paragraph. The short of it is, you’re too busy, and too tired, and after two days, another half of the berries will have disappeared into various mouthpits. And what is left will JUST begin to mush up in a way that makes it easier to can.

Step 3> Remove the tops, put the berries in some pans, and add the scientifically measured amounts of lemons and sugar that meet your fancy. Here’s where I’m hoping somebody chances on this post who’s not as big of a know-it-not as I am. I was really wavering on the sugar. They’re strawberries; on their own, they’re about the sweetest food imaginable.  Right?  And I know that the sugar is what’s needed as a preservative, but don’t the berry’s own sugars serve this purpose? Opinions?

In any event, Food Preserver Google didn’t have the immediate answers to these questions, so I chucked in some sugar, to be safe.  Scientifically measured, it was a couple of handfuls.  I hope that’s enough, but really, if we all die of botulism, at least we’ll have gone out on a food worthy of such an ending.

Step 4> Boil the everloving shit out of all this on your outdoor woodstove, stirring gently and standing close by so that you can waft up the goodness all the while.  Ruminate: is this, in fact, the best thing ever to have entered your noseholes?  Conclude: quite possibly.

Step 5> Do all the requisite canning tasks: water bath, sterile jars, fresh lids, fingers burnt all to hell, etc. If you’re using the outdoor cookstove, and you haul your own water up the hill, you might be tempted, as I was, to forego the canning rack that sits inside the pan, and instead lie the jars on their sides (you must cover the jars entirely with water for the seals to work, see, and jars on their side don’t need as much water as those standing in a rack).  Makes perfect conservational sense, but if you try this at your home, don’t forget that the stovetop gets HOT, and your jars will be boiling violently. Because if you do forget this, they may boil hard enough, in fact, that one of your half-pint jars full of the jam you’ve just worked on for two days (more-or-less) cracks and is lost. And this would ruin your whole two days, except it doesn’t, because you’ve spent two whole days eating berries and blaming it on the little person. Also, because you salvaged your other jars.

Step 6> Leave the not-insubstantial mess outside on the picnic table, for the rain or bears to pre-rinse.  If it does rain overnight, and it will, because it’s been raining almost every damned night, consider yourself lucky when you’re cleaning up after morning toast with jam.  Don’t forget to wipe your mouth.  No, not on the back of your hand.  What are you, some kind of common slob?

Step 7> Realize that upon a (not-too carful) cost/benefit analysis, you probably ought to get your own strawberry bed established next year.

Step 8> Feel awfully pleased with yourself, and gear up for the raspberries that should be ripe any day now.