In a jam

First I need to rant, and then I can move on to the important stuff:

While I decided to run off to Cabo with my girl friends for a few days my dear and loving husband worked his tail off and carried both of our loads for a few days. He was really diligent about making sure that everything was in order, including the blog posts and connecting them to our primary source for pushing content: Facebook. However, thanks to a glitch that I think I may have originally caused, Facebook has decided that we are spam and it will no longer allow us to post any link from this website on Facebook. And of course, Facebook being the giant that it is- doesn’t have a “customer service” department that you can contact and politely tell them that we are not in fact, a processed meat product, that we are good and wholesome farm site that trying to provide information to its community.  SO! All that to say, we hope that you will take the time to subscribe via your google reader or blog aggregator tool or the little subscribe box at the top right hand corner of this page so that you don’t have to miss out on all of the crazy things that happen in the lives of The Bubba’s and The Collective.

Okay, I’m better now.

Now onto the berry good stuff:

Strawberry season is happening folks- and I’m totally missing it. For some reason this year, I am living in a time warp and really having a hard time grasping that it is already the middle of June, that berry season is in full swing and that in a few short months we are going to be headed into fall and we’re going to birth a child. Maybe its because I keep trying to hold still and make things slow down a bit so that I can enjoy the last months of a life Bubba and I are completely leaving behind by becoming parents but HOLY COW I’m going to miss berry season if I stand still to long!

If you are planning to make strawberry jam, DO IT NOW. The season this year is short and my favorite jamming variety is already at it’s end. If you can find Hood strawberries still, this is really the best variety for jamming. I would avoid the Shuskan variety as it has less natural sugars and pectin. They might look pretty and bigger than hoods but you’ll notice a big difference in taste and texture.

New to jam making? No worries, its so easy you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before. Last year I hosted a jam making class and we had a blast making a ton of strawberry jam under the watchful and experienced eye of my Gramma Jackie who makes the best freezer jam around. We will be doing it all over again this year but will use either raspberries or blackberries for something different.

Raspberries are already starting to ripen so watch for u-pick stands and your local farms to be selling these morsels of goodness in the coming weeks.

So go ahead- take advantage of the season and gorge yourself on berries! It’s one of my favorite times of year and one of my favorite things about Oregon summers.