Jamergency

We ran out of jam yesterday. It was a jamergency.

What to do?

I could ride to the grocery store and purchase a very expensive jar of corporate jam. Many shoppers are willing to pay for that kind of convenience, but I would rather not have to buy jam (or anything else) if I can help it.

Instead, I went to Mother Nature's Grocery Store, where everything is free. 

But free doesn't mean you don't have to work for the bounty. 

It took me about an hour of cruising our back yard field looking for and picking wild blackberries before I had enough fruit to make a bit of jam. I didn't find a lot, and compared to the giant Himalayan Blackberries of the west coast, the wild blackberries in Nova Scotia are very small.

However, I must admit that a good deal of that time was spent just looking around and enjoying the sights, sounds, and smells of the late summer evening.

Once inside, I washed and crushed the blackberries, added a modest amount of sugar, then boiled them until  they arrived at an appropriate jammy consistency.

No pectin required, another thing I didn't have to buy.

In the end all that enjoyable foraging work provided a small jar of delicious wild blackberry jam. It also saved me some money.

But more than that, the joy of picking the berries and making the product with my own two hands was priceless.