Strawberry Picking

Doubtless God could have made a better berry,
but doubtless God never did.

~William Butler

* This post has been edited to include a link to the blog where I got my recipe to make strawberry jam! Thank you Produce Stories!!! :)

There is a farm about 45 minutes from us where you can pick your own strawberries for only $1.50 a pound. The boys and I have been twice. We had never done anything like this and we had soooo much fun. The first time we came home with five pounds of luscious berries. Two weeks later we returned on a mission and brought home 2o pounds! We gave some to friends, ate a ton, froze lots for smoothies and I made homemade strawberry jam. Wohooo!!! It was the first time in my life I ate something that, to my knowledge, had come out of the ground that very same day. Here are some photos!

We talked about the stages of the strawberry plant and Thatcher wanted to take photos of each stage we found!

And here is the jelly I made. :) Pretty good first attempt by a city girl who has never canned a thing in her life - or never picked fresh food from a farm for that matter! I chose to not use pectin or gelatin to make it more "jellyish" but only used strawberries, grated apple (for natural pectin), lemon juice and agave nectar. It tastes wonderful and now I have eight jars of this yummy goodness to last us hopefully until next year - once I add my blueberry jam to the collection when blueberry season starts in June anyway!

I searched online for a solid hour for a recipe using no sweetners but agave nectar and finally found this gem of a blog: Produce Stories. Her recipe for jam was so easy and it tastes incredible. My first batch needed the full 3/4 cup of agave but the second batch needed only 1/2 cup. Happy jam making!!!