Can It, on Jam and "Foraging" for your own food

With blackberries being in the full flush of their fruiting season, I have found myself in a deluge of berries. Our new apartment has a yard, and that yard is bordered on two sides with thick, tangly, gigantic blackberry hedges. Not wanting this free bounty to go to waste, I have started to make jam. I am not versed in the art of jam making and I am learning as I go. My first few attempts were more, spreads or compotes than true jams, but tasty nonetheless. I now have my secret weapon, Pomona's Universal Pectin. A marvel of food chemistry. It's very cool.

I have also ventured out to Sauvie Island to pick my own food. And to buy local produce I did not pick. This is something very rewarding, if you live in a place where it is feasible to do so, you will save money on produce and get more healthful produce in the bargain. Carpooling makes this not just more economical, but more fun, and if you are making jam and need lots of berries, more productive!
My first trip to the island alone, I went to Columbia Farms , and there I picked peaches ripe from the tree, blueberries and late season raspberries. I think I spent a good 3 hours or so picking things.

Peaches and other tree fruit is easy to pick. Berries are work. Hunting down the few remaining raspberries was worth it, the air intoxicatingly fragrant and the berries were the 'best raspberries ever", warm from the sun and melt in your mouth soft and slightly fuzzy the way raspberries are.
Blueberries are a pain, because even if they are blue, they still may not be ripe, and the bushes are loaded with blueberries that may not be ripe. It is a little overwhelming.
But all in all I got enough fruit for several jars of jam. About 2 lbs of raspberries and 4 of blueberries and 8 or so of peaches. My grand total? $12.50. Just try to beat those prices in the store. It was my labor and my shipping and no packaging.

I will no longer complain about how expensive local berries are in a place where you can get blackberries for free on the road side, or backyard. Berry picking is time consuming. I easily spend 30 mins or more out back picking blackberries, making sure only ripe ones get picked. The yard is not that big, but there are a lot of berries... So someone had to pick those supermarket berries and get paid, probly not enough, and then someone had to make the little plastic clamshell they get put in, and someone had to sort and rinse the fruit so no bad bits get by and someone had to pack them all up on trucks and someone had to buy gas and maintain the trucks and someone had to drive the truck and deliver the fruit to the store and at the grocery store, someone had to unpack and display and sign the fruit and someone had to ring you up for the fruit. I think maybe 2-3 dollars a pint is actually pretty cheap now. But not as cheap as doing the work yerself, so I did.

Besides, how could you not want to go to a place this beautiful?

Buying produce from a farmer's market is also cheaper, not the weekend ones in the city(although they can be cheeper than a store, it's definetly still better food), but a market out on someone's farm or a collective near some farms. All they have to do is pick it and pay someone to sell it, or not if it's your farm I guess and you are working there, or get agriculture interns or something. Anyways. It's super fresh food and it's cheap. And it's fun. At least I think so. I also feel better about supporting a local farm with agriculture practices I agree with. I don't have to wait for a weekly market I may or may not have the morning off work. The food is seasonal, I am gaining an appreciation for truly ripe foods grown in the season they are meant to grow. Green beans never tasted so good.

So anyways check out a CSA or find a market out in the farmlands near where you live if you live near such a thing, and give it a go!

So now, armed with Pomona and about 12 lbs of luscious ripe peaches and more blackberries harvested yesterday, I am off to jam some more fruit. If you get Jam from me, you now now it's history. WOooo.
And secretly, between you and me, my favorite part is making the jam jar labels on photoshop. ;)