Pop, Pop, Pop

WV Sawmiller · July 18, 2015, 11:56:07 PM

Yep, that's what it sounds like here in the house right now. Just made a batch of blackberry jam and you can hear the lids sealing making their popping sound.

Started with 11 pints of fresh picked blackberries (they just started getting ripe up here this week) in a 3 gallon pan, added a pint of water to get them started without scortching, cooked them till all turned red, added 8 lbs of sugar and a cup of lemon juice and cooked a couple hours till starting thickening properly. Yielded 11-1/4 pints.

May pick some more next week if conditions permit.

Mom is coming out in about 3 weeks and bringing me 4 gallons of blueberries and some figs my first cousin gathered for me and they froze. Orient/Korean Pears may be getting ripe down there on the old place and she may bring a couple bushels of them we will can and make preserves.

I sure wish they had a couple gallons of scuppernongs/muscadines to make scuppernong hull preserves. They grow wild a hundred miles or so south of here but all we have up here are wild grapes. They dry on the vines and great wildlife food but too small to be worth harvesting and processing. I'll munch on a few fresh ones while fishing and the raisins in the winter when bow hunting. I used to collect wild muscadines along the river in Fla, Ga, NC and SC. Find a tree with a vine that fell in the river and just run the boat under them and pick them. Just make sure no wasp nest in them or a cottonmouth laying on a limb. May be able to buy some at farmers market at exit 14 on I-77 in Va in September/October if we go to Charlotte to visit our daughter.

4x4American · July 19, 2015, 12:08:51 AM

Sounds awesome! 8)

Magicman · July 19, 2015, 08:20:58 AM

Our old Fig tree is loaded and the blue jays tell us when they start getting ripe.

Pears will be getting ready when we get back from the PR.

WV Sawmiller · July 19, 2015, 12:15:15 PM

MM,

I have 4-5 figs planted here but they die down every year then sprout back the next year. One year one bush did produce a couple of quarts of figs. None since. I think we are in the extreme cold region they will grow. Seems odd as they thrive in Turkey (Brown turkey figs) and their weather is as cold or colder there as here. If you have a good recipe for fig preserves I'd love to have it as I never put any up. Looked at a few on the web and looks pretty simple.

My old mentor had a couple of fig trees and when I was a kid I'd spend the day at his place shooting blue jays out of them. If you ever wounded one as a decoy you were set as long as he'd call to the others. To this day I still despise blue jays and crows (which are both in the same family).

beenthere · July 19, 2015, 12:47:43 PM

A good friend (passed away now) had a fig tree in WI, and every fall he would put it to rest in the winter time... somehow laying it down in a bed of leaves and some framing, then in the Spring would uncover it and harvest the figs. He was Italian decent which may have led to a family tradition.

And turkey has all climates, IIRC. From warm near the sea to cold high in the mountains.