My neighbors think these aren’t worth the trouble. I disagree. The blackberries in the surrounding abandoned gardens were in full swing. So I harvested what I could. And then I made jam from what we couldn’t eat fresh.

Note: The video version of this post gets released on Saturday, August 24, 2024.

I’m back in the blackberries, and there are still so many. I did a full round yesterday, and there are still so many.

I am right next to the road, not close enough for it to be an issue with exhaust fumes, but definitely close enough for noise. Which is also why I’m not gonna film any of this. There is so much street noise, but I just wanted to give you a little intro while I harvest these many blackberries.

I’d harvested blackberries over the course of two weeks. We’d eaten many fresh, but I’d also preserved many. I’d sneak in for half an hour of harvesting after whatever I did in the garden.

There is a second kind of blackberries on one of the plots that will ripen after this kind is done fruiting. But it won’t be a big harvest. It’s just one bush. The bulk of the harvest was in early August, and I took full advantage.

As always, I made sure to leave most for the local wildlife. There are birds nesting near them, too. Luckily, there were more berries than we all could eat.

I’d made pectin-free jam with the first few kilos, but my husband requested some thicker jam. That gave me a chance to film the jam making, and thus you get to join me in the kitchen.
But first, let’s finish resetting the fence.

I also needed to move it around the flower beds to clean those up soon. If I could get it out of the grass…

I trimmed the fence line. The entire fence line is trimmed, and it was a lot of work.

I didn’t expect it to be so grown in and it took me an hour and a half to reset the fence and just trim the little bit of grass at the fence line. But it is moved, it is where it’s supposed to be.

I’m not 100% happy with it, but I can technically get around the flower beds inside the fence now, now, which means we can finally clean up the flower beds whenever I find time. Yeah, whenever.

So now I’m going to harvest the easy-access blackberries and then I’m going to go home and make dinner.

It’s a beautiful Sunday morning. We had a really good day yesterday, and I’m about to make blackberry jam and to clean up all the things I canned. So I figured it’d take you long.

I made sure the blackberries were releasing enough water not to burn before starting to tidy up the kitchen. I’d canned potatoes a couple days earlier but not gotten around to shelving them yet.

I took off the little clips, and labeled everything. For potatoes, it’s only the date, as they are easy to identify by looking at them. I tried making a label for the batch but it was hard to keep track off, so I now label every jar.

We still had quite a few jars from my canning round a few days before this one but we’d use them quickly. On the shelf above were the first blackberry jams I’d made. Delicious and pretty!

There was more syrup in the canner, as well. I’d left it to cool there over night, so I didn’t have to handle hot jars.

I unloaded them all onto the counter to remove the clips. We don’t have a lot of counterspace in this kitchen. The counter was pretty full.

I had my husband design this little clip. It just goes into the canner so I don’t have to hold the little top. And that just makes it a lot easier. I just can’t forget it’s in there, because when I fill the canner back up it fills the kitchen if that’s in there. And that… Yeah.

I was done with the canner for the time being, so I emptied and cleaned it. The little tap means I can do other things while it empties the 27-liter canner.

Like make a huge mess of my kitchen… Like I said, there isn’t enough room in this kitchen.

After taking a moment to deal with overwhelm and sending Pepper to a safe spot, I dealt with the mess. The very sticky mess…

I guess syrup gets to join the top of the list of things I hate cleaning up.

It’s in good company with milk and oil… The glass shards added an extra layer of annoying. It took me almost half an hour to clean up the shards and sticky stuff.

I’d slammed the off button on the stove when it happened to buy time to deal with the problem. So, I reheated the blackberries and added the sugar and apple pectin.

I was surprised when I realized I’d need to use half of the package I’d bought for testing. Apparently, pectin isn’t hard to make yourself though, so I might try that at some point. The packaging said to mix the pectin with some of the sugar. For once, I followed instructions.

The blackberries were looking great, and a taste test confirmed they were delicious.

I added some lemon juice for added preservation, and because the recipe called for it.

A few weeks ago, we’d been able to add more jars, a much-needed purchase. Even in a bad garden year, I’d run out of jars.

All morning, I was paranoid about dropping more jars…

Finally, it was time to fill the jam into the glass jars. So, I turned off the heat, and added the pectin.

Some reviews had complained about it forming lumps but that didn’t seem to be an issue at all. So, I dumped it in and folded it under, then stirred everything up well. No lumps.

I ladled the jam into the jars. I again didn’t have enough room to work. But I figured it out.

I kept having to rearrange the jars to get them close to the pot. More potential for falling glass. And dropping these would have meant dropping hard-earned blackberry jam, as well.

The jars were filled, the rims cleaned, so I closed them up with the little clips.

I know, European jars are different than what many of you are used to. I am a big fan of the system. They have served me well.

So long, and thanks for being here.