Eggs - 112
Bulgarian Pepper - 1
I have made jam since forever. I learned from Mom when I was a kid. Actually, one of my first kitchen memories is making jam: I was in my underwear, smashing berries with a fork in our kitchen on 5th Street. Most of the jams we made when I was little were either strawberry or blackberry. I'd help pick wild blackberries at Sleepy Hollow, and we sometimes had enough for jam. Later, a neighbor kept us well-supplied with blackberries. When I was older, Papaw would buy cherries for Mom to make jam, which was a fantastic flavor. Once, someone gave us a bunch of nectarines, and Mom made jam from those. Basically, I loved homemade jam, and I made it off and on as a kid. As an adult, I have been making it for over 20 years now, and it is generally a well-received gift, so I make far more that we actually eat (although we do eat a ton of it).
This year, I made 47 pints of jam. Last year, I made 66, so I'm a bit down from that, but we didn't pick blueberries this year, and we didn't buy tons of cherries like last year. We also didn't get to upick strawberries, and I never did make mint jelly like I meant to. However, I did make a new flavor, tangerine marmalade, since I bought a half bushel of Georgia tangerines. Nathaniel is very happy with that discovery. This year's jam flavors were: raspberry, strawberry with lemon, strawberry peach, cherry, cinnamon peach, peach, blackberry peach, peach hot pepper, apple, and tangerine marmalade.
Since my tomato harvest failed, and I got no canning tomatoes elsewhere, I didn't can tomato salsa for the first time in forever (excepting 2022, of course, when I was hospitalized). However, I had a bumper crop of tomatillos, so I canned 25.5 pints of tomatillo salsa, and I canned an additional 18 pints of peach salsa and 3.5 pints of green tomato salsa, so we do have salsa, just none of the red kind. I also didn't grow a ton of cucumbers, so I only canned 6.5 pints of relish and 6 pints of dill pickles, although we ate a lot of fresh cucumbers, and I fermented several batches of dill pickles as well. Honey Peaches remain a staple for me to take to breakfast club, and I canned 28 quarts of those this year (down from 40 qts last year). I think aiming for about 35 qts a year makes sense for next year. I actually plan to can more tangerine marmalade and some chicken stock this month, but those totals will go to 2025.
In other news, last month Lydia, Malachi, and Acorn serenaded us with music:
