Bramble Jam

Last weekend a few friends and I joined my parents and The Moo at my Aunt E and Uncle T's house out near Scranton. They have about 35 acres of woods and lawn, with wild berry bramble growing on the margins. My sister and I used to spend a week there each summer, so we're very familiar with the land and the berries. But last year E got the brilliant idea that she could pick the berries and make jam all summer, so this year we decided to join her for a Berry Pickin' Weekend.


***The path to The Bramble***


***The Bramble***


***Chloe in The Bramble***

E and T always had a menagerie of farm animals on their land, including (though not all at the same time) cows, horses, a goat, turkeys, a duck, chickens, dogs, and many many barn cats. Here are some of the animals we saw during Bramble Weekend.


***Teenage chickens***


***Polyphemus moth***


***The Moo***

We also partook in other activities during the weekend. I couldn't help myself and collected buckets and buckets of wildflowers for the house. And my Dad taught us how to shoot Uncle T's shotgun! We also found an incredible antique store in town that E didn't had never even been in. I'll post my findings from that another day, it was too exciting to take pictures.






***Katie with the "ladies gun"***

We ended up having enough berries for two batches of jam and one batch of jelly! We combined raspberries from The Bramble, blackberries from Bartram's Garden that I picked before we left, and blueberries that my mom brought from NJ.


***Mashing raspberries***


***Squeezing raspberries and blackberries through cheesecloth to make the jelly***


***Sterilization***


***The haul***

The weekend was ideal. The perfect mixture of friends, family, chickens, berries, shotguns and antiques.