plant friday: orchards part 1

 I've been out to pick apples, raspberries and pumpkins five different times this fall.
Obsessed you say? It's true. I love raspberries for raspberry jam. I love apples for apple pie, apple crisp and keeping the doctor away. But I may love pumpkins most of all. Pumpkins are so friendly and colorful.

They scream fall and cozy! Don't you just want to knock on the person's door who has them beautifully piled up on their front porch and invite yourself in for dinner and a glass of wine?! Or is that just me.

Here are some of our adventures in raspberry picking photos-

- with raspberries, look for low hanging, bent over branches - that's where you find the treasure -

- i had to lay on the ground for this photo - aren't they beautiful -

- koko and his buddy - he ate ten berries for every one i picked -

- this amount of raspberries makes 6 smaller jars of jam -

- canning jam really is easy and makes a great gift during the holidays-

A few notes about raspberry jam-
Jam is made by cooking the whole fruit (chopped or crushed, but using the whole fruit). Jelly is made with the juice from the fruit. In the old house, our favorite is raspberry jam.

I use this recipe to remind myself of the approximate ratios and canning steps.
I do not weigh my berries; I use about eight cups. I use only 3 1/2 cups of sugar. Pectin is not needed in raspberry jam. Pectin is naturally occurring in fruit and when you cook it with sugar at high temperatures,
you get the gel effect. That's how I understand it anyway!

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in the details:

thanks, Kim, for a fun morning with our boys at the orchard

Kylie, you are my jam/canning inspiration

and, yes, sitting on the old house's front porch is a bountiful display of gourds and pumpkins