Jam Archives - Natural Suburbia

Today’s Activities

By Linda on October 26, 2011 in Fairy Garden, Flowers, Jam

Today has been such a productive day, it started off with more Mulberry picking, but after a while we just stretched an old mosquito net under each branch, shook the branches and loads of ripe fruit rained down. It was wonderful and so much easier than picking each little berry individually. They were washed and another 12 bottles of jam have been made, I really love this, I feel like a pioneer! The soap that we made a few weeks ago is hardening nicely and we will start using that in about a months time. So for now we have jam and handmade soap to gift friends and family with at Christmas:) I must start on some more gifts, Christmas is so close now!

I also managed to plant some seeds today for squash, pumpkins and sugar baby melons.

Catching mulberries…

We have discovered that we also have a white mulberry tree, those berries are in the basin on the right, I will make a new batch of jam for these.

This is Lucy Rabbit she is visiting us all the way from Australia. I will soon be sending her on to Kristen in the USA. Lucy has been patiently watching me make jam all day:) It is so lovely to have her visit us:)

I love these Calendula flowers, I have planted them all amongst my veggies to attract bees and other pollinators.

Grapefruits!

A shy apple…

Happy Wednesday:)

Making Mulberry Jam

By Linda on October 24, 2011 in Canning, Gardening, Homesteading, Jam

We have had such an exceptionally hot day here in Johannesburg today, 35 deg C, as soon as we walk out the door we can feel the heat bearing down on us, not too pleasant at all. Is anyone in Australia or New Zealand experiencing similar weather? We have had to water our veggies like crazy to save them from being burnt by the sun… Anyway, today I decided I wanted to try and make jam. We have a mulberry tree that grows in a rather shady area of our garden and this tree gives us the most wonderful fruit year after year, really sweet, juicy mulberries, so mulberry picking we went. We have another five mulberry trees in our garden, but this is the one! So after lunch, we all went outside and started to pick as many of the little fruits as we could find. A whole bowl was picked and then the fun started. I have some left over mulberries from today’s harvest so I will attempt a different recipe tomorrow.

I found this recipe, I only used berries and sugar and now we have six jars of lovely sweet mulberry jam cooling in the kitchen.

I washed the berries first.

Then I thought I would put them through the juicer and extract the juice. I kept the pulp.

I started boiling the glass jars for the jam and made sure they were ready to use at the same time that the jam was ready to be bottled in the jars.

I added the sugar and I also added some of the pulp that was put through the juicer that I kept aside earlier.

Once the jam had boiled and thickened, I removed it from the heat, spooned it into the boiling hot bottles, left a space at the top of the jam jar and put on the lid.

And there you go, lovely jam, please refer to the original recipe in the link above for exact measurements and method:) I think a few of these bottles will be nice to give away as gifts.

What have you been doing today?

Have a lovely day.
Linda

Jam Update:
We ate some of the jam on toast this morning and I must say, it is just wonderful!! I am so glad I put the mulberries through the juicer, it gave us beautiful smooth pulp to add to the liquid on the stove and the consistency of the jam is divine, no big pieces of fruit, just lovely:)

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Today’s Activities

Making Mulberry Jam