Making jam of wild berries - part II

One cannot deny it - summer's over and also the harvesting time is at its final stage. But I collected quite some fruit and berries this year and a few may still come. From most of the fruit I cooked jam in particular this was:

gooseberry

blueberry

black cherry

cornel cherry

sallow thorn

mountain ash

It's the first time in years I haven't made blackberry jam. But there's still some left from last years and I ran out of glasses, hence I skipped blackberry in favour of new recipes.

Making jam of wild berries

Well, the wild berries harvest for this year is rather complete. I collected quite a few blueberries and many blackberries, but also a fair share of raspberries. It was a good year for berries.

All in all my efforts to collect berries yielded to about 50 glasses of jam.

The very first blueberries I found on the 30th of May at the Lippischer Velmerstot's peak, the last time I collected blueberries this year was on August the 1st on a lower hillside. There were still plenty of berries, but collecting them was much harder already compared to end of June/early July. Hence I didn't collect more blueberries later again. While I combined the first blueberries with some raspberries, the last harvest I combined with blackberries. Those blackberries were the first of this year and I collected them until September the 15th. There are still many blackberries to find, but the later the year, the more difficult it is to get a good quality of blackberries.

I traded a few glasses of my jam for some self made strawberry jam that was pretty delicious, too. But all in all I like blueberry and blackberry jam more. And these jams are even more healthy, too. Blackberries and Blueberries both contain Vitamin C, some Flavonoids and minerals, blueberries are famous for their health supporting abilities since ages, Hildegard von Bingen praised them particularly

I am still considering to collect a few fruits of the mountain ash and try to make jam of that, too. Never tried that before, but it is said to be delicious, too

Blueberries

On May the 30th I collected my first blueberries of this year. That was pretty early and done ona nice trip up the Velmerstot, which definitely is one of my very favorite locations. Up on the peak there is heathland with a few nice sandstone rocks. That place is just lovely and the highest peak around here (at least about 400m above the surrounding flatlands in western direction). Unfortunately the way up to that peak is not too easy with the bike and quite a distance (out and return about 100km), too. Hence I don't go there too often.

The nearer heights are a good place for blueberries, too. There is a very good place to collect blueberries rather close and much lower (about 200m lower than the Velmerstot). This year blueberries are really plenty and rather big, but harvesting is still pretty time consuming (this is Vaccinium myrtillus, not some cultivated form or V. corymbosum). Also there are many ticks waiting to secretly crawl on you. While getting biten isn't too amusing itself, the threat of deseases is really a serious issue. But the delicious blueberry jam is worth the effort. I made 11 glasses already (blueberry with a minor part of (wild) raspberry) and am considering to do a few more glasses.

Next month I hope for a good blackberry time. Need a few more empty jam glasses.