So Plentiful!

Last year, we missed blueberry season by being out of the country. A reasonable excuse, but it meant that we were close to running out of wild blueberry jam. As in, we had one jar of sauce and no jam left!

Overall, this year has been fantastic for berries, and the blueberry patch was no exception. I think it has to do with how harsh a winter it was combined with the really beautiful weather we've had in the last month. Every different tree seems to have gone crazy with their respective seeds, fruits or flowers. In the past, we've had to roam all over our preferred picking area for 3-4 hours to get 4 quarts of berries. Today it took us 2.5 hours and we hardly moved; I think we stayed in a 50 foot by 50 foot region. We filled our containers all the way to the top, so in all we netted about 4.5 quarts.

Getting up so early in the morning not only beats the heat of the day, but because there are fewer people around, you can hear the birds and insects as they call to each other. In the distance are strains of music and the occasional shriek of laughter coming from the beach at the lake in the center of the forest. Every once in a while I'd hear the high pitched whine of a fly or the medium toned buzz of a bumble bee. Once a dragonfly passed by with it's lower, lazy sounding hum. We picked mostly in silence, enjoying the morning.

After we got home, I made a batch of blueberry muffins and set aside 4 cups of berries for the freezer. I still have 3 cups left over from 2013, which are going to get used up first. Everyone ate a few handfuls of berries and, with the remaining 12 cups of berries, I made 2 batches of blueberry jam with powdered pectin. I think this might be the first time I didn't use liquid pectin for this so I ended up having to use more blueberries in order to get enough jam to last us for the year. Or two. Who knows what next year's harvest will be?