Blueberries and the Fourth of July

Strawberry and Cherry Jam.

Yesterday Clay was taking off for a bachelor party in New York and I had to drop him off at a friends house by 1:00. That left us enough time for him to get packed and go to Crow's Nest to pick blueberries. I have been there to pick blackberries but this was my first time for the blueberries. It seemed like a lot of the people were starting at the far end of the field and working their way back to the entrance where you pay. I think must of them had their buckets full before they made it back to the first few bushes because Clay and I filled up our one pound bucket just picking on about six bushes and we didn't have to walk far. When I got back home I rinsed and dried the berries to freeze. I put one tray of berries in the freezer before bagging. Mom suggested that this will let each individual berry freeze and then when you want to snack on a few, you don't have to thaw the whole bag. This seemed to work great but when I pulled out the tray to bag it fell from my counter and it sounded as if I had just dropped one hundred marbles on the floor. Being frozen they were a little easier to pick back up at least. I hope to make a blueberry crisp for a cookout that I'm going to tomorrow on the 5th. As for the fourth I went to a picnic sponsored by our local Grange that my parents are members of. I'm sure to post later about the Grange when the Price's Fork Fair rolls around. There was a lot of yummy food but I plan to rest and work around the house the rest of the day so no fireworks for me. We are having a nice sprinkling outside now and if it dries up I will plant a few new plants I picked up at the Crow's Nest Nursery that were half off yesterday! Clay took our camera so no pictures for now.

Update: I did not end up planting today, but I did get a nice Fourth of July surprise. I knew that I needed to pick black raspberries before they went bad so I gathered about a cup and 1/2. When I'm done I usually go over to the strawberries and find just a handful. Today they berries were just glorious. I picked at least 2 and1/2 cups and they were the size of golf balls! Of course Clay is not here to share them with so I called grandma to share my news. Now I'm snacking on some sugar snap peas from my neighbors garden. My neighbors are a girl that is in the Osteopathic School of Medicine at Tech and her boyfriend that does art work for science books. He works at home and was happy to play around with the land they have and started a very nice garden. We get to share our ups and downs of gardening. We have a pact to run off any deer or critters if the other is away and of course we share the produce. Clay can remember when his grandfather farmed at our house and the neighbor at that time also had a garden and they were always "competing" for the best garden. I would love to see pictures of the gardens during that time.