Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

We had good warning on the storm that dumped ice and snow on us, and I made plans to keep busy.

I had planned on making jam this weekend, lots of it. We have that huge thornless blackberry hedge (below) that started out as a single cane the year I met Ron. I can only make so many pies and cobblers and blackberry buckles… I really need to make jam, too. This year I think I’m going to have to work harder at selling some of the blackberries. I offered them up free to anyone who would pick them last year and I still put a gazillion bags into the freezer.

I took 3 gallon bags out of the freezer Thursday night to make jam. Just had a look in the freezer and there are 2 more gallon bags… plus 6 quart bags! That is just from this past year… I took a couple gallon bags to my friend over in Oklahoma last year when I visited. LOTS of berries!

Anyhow, in preparation of the big blackberry jam making, I went to visit my Mom and borrow her food mill. I absolutely cannot stand seeds in berries. I dislike them so much that I won’t usually even eat fresh strawberries… the crunching seeds in my teeth makes me forget how wonderful they taste. I can make all the blackberry pie and such that Ron will eat, but I don’t eat any of it myself because of those seeds.

Mom bought this food mill a few years ago. It’s really wonderful at getting the seeds out… I’ve used it previously on raspberries. Mom uses it for tomatoes, but hasn’t used it in a few years. The funny thing is, we don’t even have the berry screen… just the standard screen that it came with. The berry screen is supposed to even get strawberry seeds out… but the standard screen works great at getting out regular berry seeds and tomato seeds.

So, there we have the machine processing the cooked berries. The instructions do NOT say to cook things first. What I did yesterday was try to process the thawed berries without cooking. They were still a bit frozen but squishy, so I thought the machine could handle it if I went slow.

To make a long story slightly shorter… it couldn’t. The screen broke apart from the bit that holds it to the machine. AUGH! When we looked at it, it was easy to see why… it only had 2 good welds on it and those were both about an inch apart… so the rest of it wasn’t really welded. Pop goes the screen.

I was freaking out… this belongs to my Mom, and now I have to find a replacement part. I did, too. This is an older model but I found a place online selling replacement parts for it and bought one. The internet is great! But I’ve got a dilemma here… what the heck do I do with 3 gallons of thawed out berries? Refreeze them and do this when my replacement part comes? Get seeds out the old fashioned way, with a sieve? (blargh, but that would take forever)

Ron came to my rescue. He has a MAPP gas welding kit. He got it out of the garage and let it all come up to room temperature, and then he welded the screen back to the holder bit. Not a perfect job…. but at least it will hold so that I can get on with my jam making!

While the whole welding thing was pending, I packed most of the berries into a canister and put them back in the freezer. (bags were leaking) The partial bag I dumped out into a pan on the stove and brought them up to simmer. By the time the welding was done and the machine put together to make sure it would work… well, it was late and I was tired of messing around. I got the canister back out of the freezer and put it in the fridge.

Bright and early this morning I got the canister out of the fridge and poured it all into a pot to cook. Didn’t cook it long, just enough to soften things up a bit. I also decided to use the grape spiral for the machine, instead of the regular (longer) spiral. Blackberries have a lot of seeds and they also have a pithy center.

This is what you get out of the end of the machine….

Looks like a lot of pulp left in that too. And it was, so I did like they recommend with the grape spiral and put all the waste back through the machine again. Probably could have gone one more time but the bowl of good stuff was nearly full at that point.

I forgot to take photos of any of the rest of the jam making process… or the jars all filled and everything. I made 3 batches of jam today, and now have 6 pint jars and 12 half pint jars of SEEDLESS blackberry jam. There were a couple teaspoonfuls left in the pot after the last batch… so I made some toast and used that up! :)

Still have a bit of clean up to do… as soon as I was done with the last batch of jam this afternoon we went out to walk the dogs in the 8 inches or so of snow we got. I should have taken the camera, it was really beautiful down by the pond. I did upload some more photos, though… continuing yesterdays picture story of the yard. So I’ll just paste them in here…

First, the yard last night just after dark. It was still snowing, and the flash helped catch that.

Then again this morning. The snow had stopped falling, but the sun never actually came out today.

The big tree and the neighbors house… not the exact view as last year, but you could still compare it a bit…..

One of my bluebird houses. Good thing the birds don’t need them this time of year, that’s a lot of ice hanging on it.

Last picture for tonight… the west side of the storm shelter and how much snow piled up on the wood pile. The snow was blowing from the east…. so the boat on the east side of the cellar has no snow on it to speak of. Looks like about 2 feet of snow on the wood. We didn’t get that much snow… only about 6 or 8 inches….

I’m very tired, and my feet hurt. Walking dogs in the snow was fun, though. Right up until I realized I was packing snow up the legs of my jeans and coveralls with every step. Bits started falling into my boots, lol! The snow is pretty deep… beagle tummies were brushing it as they walked.

hugs,
Vyx

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