Saturday saw the first preserving session of the season. And it was coupled with a special treat – I finally got to meet Stephen from High Ground Organics. I’ve known the other side of Two Small Farms, Andy and Julia at Mariquita, for a long time, but have never met Stephen or Jeanne. In fact for a while it seemed like maybe they wanted to stay out of the limelight. Take for instance this very dated photo of the Two Small Farms families – come on, it’s blurry, shot from a distance, lots of shadows, and I know for a fact that Andy and Julia’s kids are way older than that now. And if you go to the High Ground Organics web site, you won’t see a single photo of Stephen or Jeanne! So I made sure to get a snap of Stephen on Friday (thanks for manning the camera, Melinda!) when he was working the pick-up site for the strawberry delivery. Here you go folks, a recent photo of Stephen of High Ground Organics! Now I just need to meet Jeanne and get a photo of her!

So Saturday saw a marathon session of jamming – luckily I had a helper at home, our 6 year old Emma (aka ragamuffin). Any chef out there should get tears of joy in their eyes when they see this photo – you see how she’s holding her knife?! Great wrist position, keeping her work surface clean and organized!

 Emma trimmed the tops of 15 baskets of strawberries! But not all of them made it into the bowl!

Then they got cooked up, pectin and sugar added, and then Jim took charge of the ladling.

And we ended up with 70 half-pint jars!

A note on cost. This was about 65 bucks worth of fruit (4 flats minus a bunch for eating and, um, Emma!), plus 20 bucks worth of pectin and sugar. Jars were about 70 bucks, but they’ll be re-used again, so maybe a 1/3 depreciation is fair? That’s about 25 bucks. Jim and I drank at least 12 bucks of beer while working, which brings the total cost up to about $122, or about $1.75 a half pint. Try getting jam for that price anywhere!

And a small word of warning – even with three of us going at it, this took a solid 4 hours of work. I never fail to get surprised how long canning takes – but it sure is fun!