Bob looooves his raspberry jam, but we have tried five times now (and five different ways) to grow raspberries as part of our small farm, and they simply do not want to cooperate. That means spending what is now about $50 per flat for local raspberries.
Now, I don’t mind spending the money for the raspberries when I put them in the freezer for winter smoothies and raspberry fools. After all, they are raspberries and therefore labor intensive to harvest. I get it.
But I do mind spending that much money to put them in a pot with sugar, to cook them down into jam. It’s seems a waste!
Plus, we are trying to grow as much of our own food as possible over time, and obviously raspberries aren’t going to be part of that.
So I tried making and canning apple butter for a few years, since we have plenty of apple trees. But Bob doesn’t like it. Ditto for pear butter and plum jam, even though we have trees to supply the fruit. Nope, he likes his raspberries!
This year, I tried making what I call Foraging Jelly. As it would be made with blackberries but also Oregon grape berries, I thought the tang might be what Bob has been missing. And this year, the birds and bears left plenty of Oregon grape berries on the plants, for some reason.
So I hoofed it to the logging road with the dogs one day and picked a bunch of the Oregon grape berries. (I already had plenty of Himalayan blackberries since, sadly, our hayfield has far too many brambles along the edges.)
I used a typical jelly process and plenty of sugar to both jell the jelly and to counteract the tart. The result? Success! It has just enough tartness to please his palate…for free.
It’s not raspberry jam, but it makes a lot more sense…and cents!
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