We've hit peak blueberries at Piopio Berry Orchard over the past week, with beautiful, huge berries on a "two for" offer. So I got onto making some blueberry jam for our farmstay guests here at Struan Farm this past week.
In December I managed to get some strawberry jam made before Christmas, with plans for blueberry, blackcurrant and "Syrian Seven Spice" damson this year. While my strawberry jam is popular, and gets rave reviews, it's quite sweet. Too sweet for me. And probably too sweet for most guests in these days of reduced sugar consumption, although don't go calling me the sugar police. I'll leave the lectures to other people, but changing tastes have prompted my decision to mix up our homemade jam offering this year.
I'm comfortable now working with frozen fruit for the blackcurrant and damson jams, even blueberry to some extent. This means I don't have to devote summer days to jamming over a hot stove when there are so many other things to do. It also means I can make a fresh batch at a time and not waste fruit, and use surplus fruit to make jam for the Piopio Community Fruit & Veg Stand in winter when contributions can get a bit thin. (Fortunately there are other jam makers in town who do the same.)
Most of the jars from the four batches I made popped and sealed, no issues there. One did look a bit "gluggy," I'll use that for baking a few of my "Kai Safari world famous in Piopio" shortcakes for the freezer. Roll on farmstay season!
Comments