Strawberry Jamming

We’re jamming……strawberry jamming.

Musings on small farm living.

So why am I standing at the kitchen counter, blurry eyed at 9 o’clock at night, sorting and chopping organic strawberries, when I should be tucked up on the sofa falling asleep over the latest Katie Fforde? ( I also have several highbrow novels and some very interesting and challenging metaphysical reading lined up, but Katie Fforde wins out after a normal day with three children, four dogs, three cats all needing various forms of attention). Well, leaving the city for the country life and a bit of land, you decide to grow something, 'cos otherwise you’re just a city slicker pretending to be a country person - like “all the others are tourists but I’m a cultured visitor “ mentality. Anyway, so twelve strawberry plants, four years on have now become a commercial (sort of) organic growing business and, two months of the year, my evenings are spent making jam. The best strawberries get sold straight, no probs, but there are half as much again that are rejected due to no fault of their own, a peck mark, slight deformity or whatnot, and what am I going to do with them.

The trouble is living on a farm somehow brings out all the traditional frugal qualities of our ancestors – waste not want not – everything must be preserved, frozen, used profitably or else why did you put so much effort into growing them in the first place. So you can’t lob 3 kilos of seconds into the bin, put it out for the rubbish collectors and forget about it. For a start there are no rubbish collectors, it’ll sit there reproachfully until composted, attracting fruit flies, or else the chickens will get drunk on fermenting fruit……… so yummy delicious strawberry jam is the result.

So chopping strawberries, brain disengaged, do I think how lucky to be surrounded by so much luscious, decadent, fragrant fruit, or that I could never get excited about them again? Are the chickens going to start laying strawberry flavoured eggs soon from all the rejected rejects, and if so should I start making strawberry soufflé? Looking at the chakra pages on http://www.aflowergallery.com where a red flower is the first chakra, is the strawberry the first fruit chakra? And if so what are all the others….orange – oranges, easy….yellow – lemons or bananas….green – apples ….we’re doing good…..now it gets harder….blue…hmmm..cliché blueberries (definitely not Smurf blue but still blue)….indigo..are damsons indigo? Or mulberries (my fingers and the children’s clothes usually turn more of a burgundy colour after harvesting them)…what about violet…I’m getting stuck now and rambling madly off the subject, what was it?

Strawberries and chakras, which leads to health – what did Margaret Roberts say strawberries were good for…skin…well my two year old daughter used to help pick strawberries last year, until two weeks into the season she came out in a massive skin rash due to excessive overindulgence causing an allergic sensitivity, so I won’t be rubbing strawberries into her skin. Rich in antioxidants, killing viruses, lowering blood pressure, helping fight cancer – sounds like a miracle fruit to me. I think I need to be more respectful of them, after all, who can complain of evenings spent in such worthwhile company.

Copyright Kit Heathcock

Strawberry Jammed Out

Latest news from the strawberry jam front – the tide of strawberries is advancing, threatening to engulf me in a wave of strawberries waiting to be processed, taking up whole shelves of the fridge, lurking in corners just when I thought I’d done the last batch. Heaving a sigh of relief as the last pot is filled and sealed, I turn around only to find the kitchen table groaning under a fresh sea of newly picked strawberries waiting to be sorted. There is no more room on the larder shelves for jam – what I’ve got there already will probably last us a decade at the current rate of consumption, I’ve used up all the jam jars and am down to oddly shaped mustard jars, coffee jars and outsized sauce jars and there are still a good few weeks of strawberry season to go. I have to start selling the jam…………..memories of a film, where ex-city career woman, moves to country with baby in tow, starts making apple puree baby food and ends up with a full scale business employing half the village, flit through my head. Country baby was her label, with a cute picture of baby, designed to appeal to other city people looking for the good life. Mind you she was a PR person, so had a head start on promoting things and I’m not a business person at all, just someone with too much jam on their hands, larder shelves and everywhere else in the house. So, I take a stall at the local market and arrive with a basket of jam, a few jars of marmalade for variety, a table and chair. I discover a few things – people smile when they see strawberry jam, people like strawberries, there is a high feel-good factor about them, they conjure up summer and celebration and treats. It’s not a hard product to sell, people are predisposed in its favour; the price just has to be not too scary. Some people are more attracted by the pretty fabric covers on the lids and choose one to match their kitchen décor…I’ll have to work on the pretty aspect. No I’m not about to become a strawberry jam millionaire, but I did sell ten jars. After thinking I’d got the jam consistency sorted, producing reliably runny but not too runny jam, I suddenly turned out several batches that set completely - thick solid stand-up-your-spoon-in jam. Now I know it’s all about pectin and how much there is in the fruit, but why now? I did leave it soaking in the sugar longer because I didn’t get round to cooking it till the afternoon, but does that do anything to pectin levels? Anyway, I now have two varieties of strawberry jam – thick and runny, both have a good flavour - and both sorts have their aficionados. But now the dilemma is, am I able to reproduce the thick jam to order or will it only happen by accident? We’re a long way from scientific laboratory controlled conditions here…. a wing and a prayer is more like it. So prayer it’ll have to be, if my market customers return demanding thick strawberry jam! Copyright 2005 Kit Heathcock