The drought made the mulberries this year really small, and a storm knocked a lot of those small berries off the trees, so we didn’t bother picking mulberries this year. We did have some in the freezer from last year, though. I got all the bags of mulberries I could find out of the freezer to make jelly early this morning. As they started melting, I saw that some of the frozen hunks of mulberries also had blueberries mixed in. And one bag wasn’t berries at all. It was grape juice I had made from the Concord grapes growing on our front porch. Now I have 17 jars of mulberry-grape-blueberry jelly, which I’m calling “Purpleberry” so the name will fit legibly on the label. 🙂
I’ll be offering this jelly at the Clintonville Farmers Market tomorrow along with a limited supply of Peach Jam and Chunky Peach Glaze.
Preserves seem to be the way to make the most of small harvests. To give you some indication of future flavors…
I still have more peaches on the other tree getting ripe, and I harvested some Rose-of-Sharon flowers this morning. I’ll cut some mint later today, and I’m accumulating various types of hot peppers as they ripen. We have more grapes on the vine, but they haven’t yet begun to ripen. I’m keeping an eye on the elderberries, and I’ll check on the crabapples next week. I’m also going to look for a recipe for pawpaw butter.
