Strawberries

One of my favorite things about summer is berry picking. Today's forecast was the best for the week, so I decided on a whim to take the kids up to Sequim and pick some strawberries. The weather was great - clear blue skies but not too hot for picking. We had a great time. Looks like my week just got a little bit more busy as I will now be making jam. Whenever I go up to Sequim, I like to stop by Sunny Farms. They always seem to have great deals on produce. Today, I couldn't resist the 15 pound bag of rhubarb. So looks like I'll be making strawberry-rhubarb jam and may even try my hand at using honey instead of sugar.

Maple Syrup!!!!

We did it!!! We actually made maple syrup from our big leaf maples in out back yard. Our 4 gallons of maple water boiled down to about 10 ounces of maple syrup. Our maple syrup has some sugar crystals that settled on the bottom of the jars. I'm not exactly sure how to filter them out, but a friend told me not to get rid of them. So for now I think we will just pour the syrup off the top trying not to disturb those crystals too much. Oh - and it taste so good!

Boiling down.

The end result.

See how the sugar crystals settled?

Beets and Tomatoes

So I finally harvested all the beets from our garden and canned them. I got a fabulous new canning book boasting 400 new recipes for me to try. So I made some sweet pickled beets. Here are the beets freshly harvested from the garden: And here they are canned. Don't you love the color of beets? I also decided to try and can some of the tomatoes from our garden. I'm not sure that I'll be doing it the same way again since it was a lot of work for a mere 2 pint jars! But I bet they will taste delicious!

Strawberry picking

Last week we went strawberry picking at Graysmarsh Berry Farm in Sequim. We went with some friends and the kiddos had such a great time picking berries or in Wyatt's case, eating berries the entire time! This farm is really great (and kid friendly too). We'll go back later this summer for blueberries and raspberries. So of course - I picked berries so I could make some jam. So with the help of my lovely husband, this:Turned to this: Into this: And finally into 25 jars of this: YUM!!!