I’m exhausted. Spent Saturday at MIL’s house canning . . . all day.
Yellow plums, blueberries, and blackberries.
pints - 8
12oz jars - 12 (one case)
1/2 pints - 24 (two cases)
4oz jars - 10
This was something like 8 batches of jam, of which one batch of plum preserves was done on Friday night, the rest were done on Saturday. What was I thinking?ÂÂ
MIL, hubby, the kids and I went up to MIL’s place on Whidbey Island on Friday because she has a wonderfully large kitchen and because the yellow plums were ripe.  The plum tree is on a piece of property she is selling, so, if we wanted yellow plums this was possiblily the last chance and if we waited another week we would most likely have missed them. So we went. Hubby and kids picked plums and blackberries and I started canning. ÂÂ
Saturday morning I decided I didn’t have enough to do so Bug and I headed out to the Farmers’ Market and ended comming back with some lovely Alpaca and four flats of blueberries. (Sorry, Emma, no young strapping farmers this time.) Four flats!? Yes, four flats of blueberries. When Bug started talking about making jam, after we had bought one flat, the woman at the booth offered us three more flats at $1 each. Umm, yes please! The flats had to be sorted but 2/3 of the berries were good and MIL and Bug sorted while I kept canning.ÂÂ
Hubby took MIL and Bubba home around 6pm, Bug and I stayed and kept going. Bug was quite a trooper, she helped mash blueberries, brought me more jars, and kept me company.
Toward the end I was putting the jam into largers jars, forget those 4oz gift jars, hand me the pints.  While the last batch was in the steam canner we loaded the car and cleaned.  The last batch came out of the canner at about 11:20 and were on the midnight ferry comming home, along with 10 other cars. ÂÂ
So, if you know me personally, it is very possible that you will be getting jam for the holidays.
