Strawberries

After a 6 month or so absence, I'm back again :)  Today as we were doing strawberries I decided to snap a few pictures and do a quick post.

I picked up 10 half flats of strawberries this morning.  Before that, I picked up 20 packages of pectin!!

I needed to freeze some berries cut up with sugar, but my primary goal was to make a bunch of jam.  This year we ran out in January, I think, and that was way too early.  I've been using the same pectin for 25 years, but a couple years ago the company changed their product.  I really haven't liked how my jam turned out the last couple years.  Yesterday as I was headed to the store, Aimee told me about my sister using a different kind, so I quickly called her.  I bought a package to give it a try.  (I was in the area of the strawberries yesterday and bought a couple half flats for fresh eating, so I had some berries to make into jam.)  I really liked how it turned out and decided to go with something different this year.

Forrest helping out with the pectin.

Tara did lots of stirring.

Yesterday when I made one batch of the jam I didn't think it was any faster than my old kind, but today when we made 20 batches, it went sooo fast!  In less than 2 hours we had 59 pints of freezer jam made.

I'm hoping our jam will last til the berries are ready next year but, if not, I did end up freezing some smashed up berries - enough for 12 more pints.  I think this jam will go further because the last couple years the jam was so thick,   This is juicier and easier to spread.

We froze 6 quarts of whole berries and 13 quarts of cut up and sugared berries, too.

One afternoon and we're all done with our strawberries for the year :)  Well, except, we need to buy some more so we can make a couple pies!!  I never like to get involved in pie making when I have so many berries to get put up.  And then, when I need to make gluten free, too, it's more of a project, so we'll put it off til next week.

I hope you all have a nice week(end) and get some good fresh berries!