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It’s jam-making time.
Imagine that scene from Fantasia when the sorcerer’s apprentice gets carried away with magic. Brooms start multiplying and marching down the stairs like endless troops, emptying buckets of water in a nightmare that terrorized an entire generation.
We’re in the mason jar version of that in our house. We’re all guilty of signing up for a familiar nightmare now and then. This is one of mine.
Serviceberries, mulberries and cherries are coming in all at once. Cherries and mulberries are the most precious for their jam, but cherries are the toughest.
There’s no negotiating with cherries. You can’t schedule them. They schedule you. They are bright, glistening red, sweet to eat and hang on trees.
Bird candy.
Wait too long and a tree covered in red one day gets picked clean to green the next. Sated robins and redstarts laugh at you from surrounding trees as you stand there, dejected, an empty bucket in each hand.
So there I was, on the fifth step of the orchard ladder in the early hours of a day that would hit 98 by noon. It was a pleasant 72 with a dawn haze that cooled my skin. Once the sun rose over the trees, that humidity would turn into a hot, sticky rag. I was picking fast.
You can pick both serviceberries and cherries by the handful, but have to grasp each bundle in your palm, pulling gently with your fingers until only the ripe ones land in your hand.
It’s coaxing more than picking and you’re bound to lose a few. The dogs resting in the shade below didn’t mind a bit. Nothing goes to waste around here. Just ask them.
I picked about two gallons before I had to abandon the tree. It was getting hot. It was also time to prep for Draco Hill’s annual Potluck on the Prairie, which we had moved inside. With no time to process the cherries, I stashed the entire bucket in the second fridge.
When I pulled it out a day later, the cherries had already begun to mold. This is how they are. The princess of fruit. Mulberries get soggy. Serviceberries get ripe. But cherries? Tiny lumps of white spores start gluing the wettest ones together, all the way through to the bottom of the bucket.
I slice mold off cheese and skim it off jam. There was no way I’d lose a 2-gallon bucket of cherries. After picking through the whole batch, rinsing the rest through the colander, setting up the pots and throwing the first mason jars in soapy water, I was ready to go.
One pot for the cherries, sugar, pectin and lemon juice. The other for sterilizing washed jars. A sink full of hot, soapy water. While I’m moving jars of cherry jam into the boiling water for canning, more jars are landing in the soapy water. Brooms. Buckets. Brooms. Buckets.
My grandmother didn’t teach me how to do this. I learned it from a book. I’m missing the wisdom you get from watching people who’ve done it a hundred times. That’s obvious every time I try making jam.
You see, there’s no predicting how my jam will come out. I always try to cook larger batches than the recipe calls for. Who makes 4 pints of cherry jam? What sad little tree is that much coming from?
But if I triple the batch, I get done sooner! That’s how I end up with syrup. Or if I try to cook it down more, red rock candy in a jar.
The annual guessing game began with me trying to triple 1.5 cups of this and 3 teaspoons of that. (Really? Nine teaspoons of lemon juice? That seems like too much. I’ll use seven.)
Then I started running out of pectin, the not-so-secret ingredient that sets the fruit.
I negotiated silently. I could spread the remaining pectin out over the rest of the batches. I could add more sugar to make up for it. They’re sour cherries after all, maybe that’s what they need. I can live with syrup. I just have to keep track of which batch it is so I label it syrup just in case I give it away…
This is my life.
They say perfect is the enemy of good, but frankly, good could make more of an appearance around here. I drive some friends to distraction and I’ve lost others with my willingness to live with good enough.
Some shrink would probably say I’m reinforcing childhood feelings of inadequacy by purposefully failing, or just occasionally succeeding. Maybe.
Or maybe we all repeat childhood patterns we’d rather not because they’re what we know. They’re comfortable even when they’re unpleasant, a familiar anything in an unpredictable life.
Maybe consistent success sets a bar we just don’t want to set.
Maybe. Or maybe I just want to get this one thing done and move on to mulberry jam and frozen serviceberries.
As I move on, I hear that satisfying pop of the lids creating a vacuum seal on my jams and/or syrups. By the time I open them in a couple of years, I won’t care.
Instead, I’ll relish the memory of the picking of those beautiful gems off the tree…just before the birds got them!
The latest from Draco Hill Nature Farm
You’re so much fun to read. Thanks for this smile maker.
I too have been picking and processing cherries. I don't deal with mulberries, I just eat them off the tree. I decided this year that I would just make cherry juice and drink it in my fizzy water (carbonated from my Sodastream). I added a splash of cherry juice to vodka and a bit of fizzy water and behold, I have a nice summer cocktail. Good luck to you with all your processing. I too taught myself and am ok with "good enough."