The blackberries came late this year and have only ripened recently, probably due to the chilly summer we’ve had.  At any rate, I came home with 8 pounds of blackberries!  I froze 3 pounds and proceeded to make up some jam with the rest. I followed the recipe at Coconut & Lime for Blackberry Vanilla Bean Jam, but had to change it up just a bit so that I could use what I had on hand.  I didn’t have any Certo so I just used some regular boxed pectin instead.  I ended up with 10 half pint jars.  They took a good 24 hours to set up, but they did eventually set.

I do like those wide mouth Kerr Jars.  I’ll have to put them on my list to buy more!

I stopped by the Schilter’s Farm stand and picked up 40 pounds of peaches, taking advantage of a coupon they were running. :)

I made spiced peach jam with some of the peaches with cinnamon and nutmeg, based on SB Canning’s Peach Jam recipe. 9 half pints. 

The bulk of the peaches I simply canned in light syrup.  There are few things finer than the brilliance of summer peaches in the middle of a gray Washington winter. 

The peaches had rosy flesh around the pit and it was that which made the syrup turn such a pretty color.

Lastly, I made just a small batch of raspberry jam from some of our You-Pick raspberries from Picha Farms. This lone half pint was what was left over from a cake filling I made for my son’s birthday.  Raspberries are his favorites. :) I used the Raspberry Jam recipe from SB Canning, minus the vanilla.

I have a bunch more peaches to get to and lots more jars to fill.  I’m hoping to get to tomatoes in the coming weeks.