Last Week I took the plunge and brought everyone to the strawberry patch down the road to pick strawberries for jam. I was so excited to be making jam again!!! We picked 2 flates of strawberries (which is about 9 quarts-i think). It was a little difficult to convince Caitlyn they weren't for eating yet, hopefully the stained face and clothing didn't give her away to the farmer!

One of the blessings of many hands is, light labor. It only took about 1/2 an hr to pick all those strawberries and they were delighted when I mentioned they all needed to be smashed! So, they took turns mashing the berries woth all the noises that accompany boys smashing things.

Unfortunately, my luck ran out at that oint and the process became more difficult from there. I bought the wrong pectin. I will spare the details. So, 3 trips to the store, 9 boxes of pectin, and 24 hrs later, I have 24 jars of homemade strawberry jam! Yeah!