Muuuuulllllbeeerrries!! Yum!

It's mulberry season! The time of year when copious amounts of little purple berries freely and bountifully fall haphazardly to the ground from bushes and trees. Most of my mulberries are fairly large trees. I have one that is a small tree that verges on being a bush. The boys climb that one... otherwise we lay plastic sheeting underneath a couple trees to collect the sweet, little berries.

So what am I doing with them? Making jam and syrup as well as canning them whole. I hadn't really been able to do much canning or food preservation in general the last couple years. Haven't had terribly good facilities and have mainly just been trying to hang on by my fingernails.

Canning on my woodstove has been pretty neat! I like it much better than a standard burner stovetop. I can just slide my pots to a cooler spot and I set my jars right on the stovetop on a warming tray and they stay warm for canning a feat that was always difficult before!

So far I've made 20 pints of jam and canned 11 pints whole. I have to figure out a syrup recipe yet. All I know for certain is that my hands will be blue for awhile.