Started the day picking raspberries.  The weather is just perfect, 57 this morning, sunny all day and in the low 70’s and low humidity.   Last year at this time I picked 5 quarts of raspberries but today I felt lucky to get one quart.  I juiced those and got just over two cups of juice and will save that for a day or two before turning it into jelly, hoping for more!!  Then I picked blueberries for breakfast today and tomorrow those are coming good so will have to pick some Sunday to freeze.  After breakfast we went down and picked the wild blueberries.  This must be a good year for blueberries as we have never gotten so many wild blueberries.  Our wild berries have all been reclaimed from the forest.  We cut down several trees to let the sun in and cleaned out all the briars and underbrush and for the last four years have been giving them fertilizer and this year it is beginning to pay off.  Usually we would get one cup of wild berries so I could make one burberry cake by short changing the amount of berries. This year we got a full quart and I made three blueberry cakes.  If you have never picked truly wild blueberries you can’t imagine how small these berries are but they are the only kind to make a good blueberry cake.  The big cultivated ones all sink to the bottom and have almost no taste, these tiny ones stay right where you stir them and can be tasted over any flour you use to make the cake.  I used different flour in each cake.  One I did with white flour from the store, one I did with all purpose  Sifted whole wheat flour from Littleton which is almost white and the last one I did with my new whole wheat bread flour and even with that I can taste the blueberries in each and every bit.  My mother’s blueberry cake was always my favorite cake but could never make one that was as good until I discovered it was the berries that made the difference .  Anyways I froze two, one for Becca when she comes up and one to have later in the year when the blueberries are just a wonderful memory.  The third one we are eating now!!  While I was down at the garden I pick the vegetable for today’s dinner and then picked the zucchini. I had hoped to can those tomorrow but they really are not good enough for that and the plants really should be pulled up and junked so I’ll cook those for us – they are good but don’t look too good.  I picked more cucumbers and found I had enough to make picked.  So before we came up to dinner we sliced the cukes and  onions and set them to soak in iced salt water for three hours.  I also took the seeds out of some hot peppers and set them aside then went up stairs to cook dinner.  Norman stayed down stairs and cleaned up the kitchen while I cooked dinner.  OH, I forgot we went up to the corner and picked some black berries.  They are just starting to ripen and I got most a quart and I juiced those and got almost two cups so now I have two jars of berry juice waiting for more to make jelly.  After dinner and a nap we went down to make the pickles.  My recipe calls for a hot pepper or two in each jar so when I started to fill the first jar I went looking for my peppers that I had taken the seeds out of and I couldn’t find them.  After a lot of looking I asked Norman about them and he went looking and found them in the compost bin.  He had thrown them out when he was cleaning up never realizing I had deseeded them and was saving them.  We had a good laugh as that happens so often – he doesn’t hear me and hate to keep asking me to speak up so he just smiles and says yes and goes about doing what he knows he is supposed to do- clean up all my mess!!  I will try again with the next batch there are lots more peppers coming in the garden.  Anyways we got three and 1/2 quarts of bread and butter pickles canned so that is a start on the three cases we need.

Tomorrow I plan to pick more green beans and the rest of the day is open to what comes up.  If I get enough to can, we will can beans and potatoes or do what ever comes up and says that needs to be done now.  Have a great day..