Monday, June 18, 2012

A Big Jam

For the past couple of days, as I typically do at this time of year, I have been gorging myself on "wild" mulberries. I also managed to restrain myself from devouring all of the berries out of hand, and have a couple of half-gallon bottles full of the sweet, juicy things. I actually refined my harvesting technique- I use the mouth of the bottle to get the berry... place the mouth of the bottle so that the berry lies inside of it, then a quick flick of the wrist will snap the stem of the berry and it will fall into the bottle:





This also allows one to avoid the Tantalus effect- the added inches allowed me to get berries which would have been out of reach of my hand. It goes without saying, every inch counts!

Tonight, I am heading over to visit a friend of mine from high school, and his lovely wife, and we're going to make some mulberry jam. I've got the berries, they have the mason jars and pectin. We will be, so to speak, jamming:





I figure I'll have at least another week to subsist largely on mulberries, there are plenty of additional fruits which have yet to ripen, and the trees are prolific as hell. By next week, the earliest of the wild raspberries should be ripening, so it'll be a jammy couple of weeks.

8 comments:

Laura said...

Mmmm, I love berries. It's been quite a few years since I've had mulberries though.
Now I want some. :) Hope that your jamming goes well. ;)


((Hugs))
Laura

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

enjoy it while you can.

The early warmth killed nearly all the cherries in Door County by fooling the trees into budding early, then freezing them.

Of course, this is proof that Al Gore is fat or something. I dunno, those people make so little sense.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

We used to have those in the neighborhood in D.C.


None around here, that I've seen.
~

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

"My Left Hand"

P.S. Helps protect from irritated stinging insects a bit, too, I'd guess.
~

Helmut Monotreme said...

Where were you that summer my only parking space was under a mulberry tree? Between the mulberries themselves and the bird crap, my car needed a wash every other day. (Not that I washed it that often, that's just how often it needed it)

bbkf said...

snapping the wrist
jamming the berries
ripening the fruit
visiting a friend
refining the technique

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Mmmm, I love berries. It's been quite a few years since I've had mulberries though.

I've never seen them in the grocery store- I think they're too fragile to ship.

The early warmth killed nearly all the cherries in Door County by fooling the trees into budding early, then freezing them.

That's tragic, genuinely tragic.

Jammy bastard.

You know it- the raspberries will soon come in...

We used to have those in the neighborhood in D.C.

A lot of people cut them down because the trees are messy as hell. Stupid people...

P.S. Helps protect from irritated stinging insects a bit, too, I'd guess.

The mulberry trees haven't been too "buggy".

Where were you that summer my only parking space was under a mulberry tree

I ur base, killin ur d00ds.

snapping the wrist
jamming the berries
ripening the fruit
visiting a friend
refining the technique


Oh, my!

Substance McGravitas said...

Still chilly here. The poor blackberries are gonna be stunted.