Canning Season Starts Now

Wild raspberries are in season, and we have been picking them from several patches for the past week. We end up with less than a pound each day, so we bag them up and store them in the freezer until we accumulate enough to use. That day finally arrived, so we made a batch of raspberry jelly, which is our first canning session of the year.

I like seedless raspberry jelly, and since I was making this batch, that is what got made. Maggie likes the seeded version, so I will make the next batch as jam, using all of the fruit, and seeds.

Six jars may not seem like a lot, but by tomorrow we will add six jars of jam to these six jars of jelly - a full case of jars. If we used a jar of jelly every week for a year, that would be 52 jars or about five cases, which means we are already a fifth of the way to a year's supply. Even with giving jelly to friends and family we always end up with more than we can eat, so we may make one last batch and then opt to simply use the remaining fruit as dessert topping.