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Sunday, February 1, 2009

I love blackberries


One nice thing about all this hot hot hot weather - the blackberries are coming along nicely. My picking rate has increased to 2kg / hour as more and more berries ripen.

The love affair with blackberry jam continues. Call them a weed. Love 'em or hate em. But I LOVE 'em. Today I made almost 2 liters of jam using a new recipe. Easy peasy not too sweet chunky cooked in a few minutes and processed in the vacola.


Blackberry Jam


Ingredients:

1600gm blackberries

24 grams citrus pectin**

800 gm sugar*


Method:

Wash and sort blackberries.

Place in large saucepan. Mush up a little with wooden spoon.

Add pectin

Bring quickly to boil.

Add sugar, bring to boil again and hard boil for 1 minute while stiring

Pour into clean jars

Seal and process in vacola. ( I process EVERYTHING in the vacola for one hour starting with cold water)


Yum.
But I am out of jam jars and there are still so many more blackberries out there.......
*basically half the weight of whatever fruit you have.
**Pectin quantities as per instructions on packet (in this case, 8gm for every 500 gm fruit)

2 comments:

Ian said...

Hi there,

Re. www.farmblogs.blogspot.com

Sorry to be a bit off topic here but please stick with me...

I run a blog called Farm Blogs from Around the World www.farmblogs.blogspot.com - it's just a hobby of mine, is non-commercial blog and it doesn't take advertising, apart from info about my own writing.)

At Farm Blogs I am trying to gather in one place the very best of global blogging about farms and anyone involved in food or natural fibre production on any scale.

The idea behind Farm Blogs From Around the World (www.farmblogs.blogspot.com) is that people involved in farming/rural blogging recommend the blogs that they themselves find the most interesting.

When a blog is recommended to me (you were recommended to me by a blogger in Australia: http://farmblogs.blogspot.com/2009/02/bredbo-valleyview-farm-recommends.html ) I add the recommended blog to my site, as I have done with yours - with some basic info to help the country blog rolls be more than just a simple blog roll - then contact the recommended blog, asking for their own recommendations....which is how I come to be writing to you!

And so it grows, organically, hoping that good bloggers will lead us to great ones.

I'd really love it if you could send me a little text about your farm and your blog, so I can make a post about you, and ALSO you top 5 blog recommendations (extra points for any bloggers from countries not yet listed - we have Slovakia so I am growing!)

Can I hope to hear from you? I know it's a hassle but www.farmblogs.blogspot.com seems to meeting a real need and I try to do more than just a blog roll but help like minded people find each other.

(If you could also put a link to Farm Blogs that would be great, but it's no drama if you don't feel like it or find me not worthy.)

Thanks for reading this and I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
Ian

P.S In the interests of knowing a little bit about your readers, I come to you from the Auvergne in France. I'm a writer, live here with my Australian wife and our three kids (www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com) but I also run www.farmblogs.blogspot.com

I'm a rural downshifter you could say with 10 acres and we're pretty basic - a pig a year, chickens, veggies and we barter grazing and hay for meat and potatoes. We're hoping to expand as the family grows.

The Duck Herder said...

oooh - attention! I love it. Thanks Ian.

I would love to send you a little blurb and my favorite farmblog sites, although I have to warn you my farm is on the inside rather than expansive acreage.... not that urban food production isnt vitally important!

thanks Ian.

Cheers
the duck herder