As we’ve done the first day of Summer Break for 3 years in a row (which is ALL of Kelly’s lifetime if that doesn’t seem long), we spent our first morning in the strawberry fields.  This year I was determined to make jam, well…freezer jam, the easy kind, if you are feeling quite smart about your ability to can.  I don’t know how yet, but I thought I’d start with a rookie project that involved produce and jars, but half the equipment and one fourth of the time.  Hold on just a second, you are thinking…is this more Lori Math?  Well…um, MATH, you see, can be about A LOT of things (my math-centric husband and math professor stepfather are both throwing up in their mouths right now)…

The first day was quite hot, and we did some serious picking.  I asked the checkout woman at Waterman’s Farm if this pick seemed enough to make jam?  She looked a bit quizzical, and said, “I mean…it’s enough to get started.”  Having never made jam, I took her word for it, and thought…HEY, you know what’s better than one day of picking strawberries?

Two.  Two days of strawberry picking would surely be enough to make jam.  I went back on the second, and much cooler day, with Grandma and the girls, and did it all over again.  What can I say?  I LOVE strawberry jam.

Sara has always enjoyed strawberry picking, even when she was too little to know “pick red, not white”.  She seemed to get the whole “where food comes from” thing very young.

Kelly, on the other hand, would be just as happy if all of her food came from McDonald’s, if the milk came out of the cow chocolate, and if every field in the state of Indiana had a spotless bathroom at the edge.  I must say I’m quite proud of my girls; for all the dysfunctional peeing that has happened in this house this year, they did me a favor and peed in the bushes for the first time.  Gross? Whatever…it’s Farm Girl Survival 101, and I simply cannot have young ladies who don’t know how to pee in the woods properly.

No one enjoys picking strawberries more than my Mother.  I’m not even sure that she eats them.  She’s like Shirley MacLaine in “Steel Magnolias” (and I’ll end the similarities there before I get in trouble, so I’ll just say my Mom and Ousier Boudreaux…uncanny): “Southern women are supposed to wear funny-looking hats…and grow vegetables in the dirt.  Don’t ask me those questions.  I don’t know why!” She was on my doorstep with her Diet Coke bright and early, and she and Sara were READY to hit those strawberry fields!

Add in a couple of freezer bags and potato smashers, and I had two girls making some jam. They are amazing smashers, and why am I surprised?  Finally, their inconvenient creativity was channeled for good instead of evil.  We smashed, and smashed, and boiled jars, and added sugar and pectin…and we did this over, and over, and OVER.  And over.  It was very easy, and we found the recipe here.

This is where Lori Math gets tricky: those strawberries made 48 jars of jam.  FORTY EIGHT.  So, well, um, I think by anyone’s math, that’s a lot of jam.  To be fair, I used small jars.  I tasted a bit of it, and to quote my daughters, “YIKERS!  That’s delicious!” Yes it is.  After school snacks of homemade bread and jam?  Meet me in our kitchen.  Sara taking PJ&J’s to school in Kindergarten? We’re covered.  Worldwide shortage of strawberry jam?  Just come on over friends…I’ve got you covered.  As I finished, Greg laughed and said, “You never start small.  When you say you are going to learn how to can?  You CAN.” That’s right baby…for a whole year I don’t have to cut any Smucker’s coupons.  Take that overpriced Smuckers!  Anyone hungry?