Strawberries!

What a day! Last night BJ and the boys picked strawberries...a lot of strawberries. They went to our friend Troy's grandma's house. BJ was pretty impressed with her garden and huge strawberry crop. What a blessing to get so many berries for free! So, today we were geared up for making jam. Jared and Jesse were a tremendous help to me. They hulled and crushed strawberries, carried and washed jars, and cheered me on! Justin lasted about five minutes, then was off to play. :)




Looking at these pictures, my kitchen looks relatively clean. Six hours later, it was a disaster! :) I was one tired mama and hit meltdown at about 8pm when the clean-up began. Although I am exhausted, it was so much fun to make jam with my older boys and replenish our supply. We had enough berries to make 36 jars of cooked jam (with a few batches of strawberry-rhurbarb), 4 containers of freezer jam, freeze 2 gallon size zippies full of whole berries, and give a bunch to our neighbor and Aunt Linda. Hopefully, it all set up right. :)