Great Things

I've been excited all week to write this post. Martha Stewart has good things. I have GREAT things. Let me explain. I learned on Monday that strawberry season in Michigan lasts about a month. This year, it was only 3 weeks! I called Bigalow Berry Farm and ordered 2 flats. Thursday would be their last picking day. Meanwhile, my friend Kim was looking for a u-pick farm near her. (U-pick means "I pay babysitter" so really, I save money paying someone else to pick my berries.) After placing my order, the little people and I went to Campbell's Greenhouse for bell pepper plants. The greenhouses are beginning to close so everything is on sale; last Saturday I decided that my bell peppers were alive, they just weren't growing. So I bought some plants. A lot of plants. Then we stopped at Swoish's Greenhouse for eggplant plants. Same story there, although since planting the new ones, my seedlings have perked right up. Yeah! We spent the rest of the day Monday in the garden. Gosh, I love that.

Tuesday we had breakfast and I was putting little people in the car to get my strawberries when the phone rang...Bigalow's has not been able to pick this morning because of the rain and would I like to cancel my order? NO! NO! NO! Please do not cancel my order. She told me to call back in the afternoon to see if they'd been able to pick. We're not far from the farm so I knew we'd have the same weather as Bigelow's. Thankfully, we spent the morning in the garden again so I knew they'd pick. Sure enough we picked up our flats that afternoon.

Kim struck pay dirt. She and her boys picked for a couple of hours in the rain and she met me with another 16 lbs! That was basically an overflowing third flat. I have the best friends in the world, bar none. No one has friends like me, except of course their other friends, but you get my meaning. 16 lbs of strawberries! So what does three overflowing flats of strawberries look like in my kitchen? I'm so glad you asked...And so began the most exhausting, wonderful week of preserving food and the bounty of the Earth! I made strawberry jam - about 26 pints of it - and on Wednesday Kim showed up with 40 lbs of cherries she and her son had picked up at Miller's Farm. I took handfuls off the top that equalled about 8 lbs. That bottled up into 6 quarts. Again, who has better friends - me or me? Here's the finished product, which specifically is 6 pints of light sugar jam and 20 pints of no sugar jam (made with white grape juice and honey). Divine. All of it, divine. I love fresh, homemade food.