On Sunday, I was going to get the siding on the house after repairs made in the spring but it was pouring rain. Really pourting. I’d stopped by Ron and Jeanne’s on Friday waiting to hear if whale watching trips would happen or not (they did not due to weather), and Jeanne was making jam from last year’s berries. So I decided to start tackling this year’s harvest. I pulled out a crate of vacuum packed salmon berries from the freezer to start thawing, and brought down the jars, lids, rings, jar tongs and large canning pots from the garage to get things washed and ready for canning. The first batch was 30 cups of salmonberries and their juice. I looked at my old notes and guesstimated it would take 10 boxes of no sugar pectin to set. I read online a good article from a Home Economist or whatever they are called now, and she gave a simple explanation of putting in 1 tbs of lemonjuice per 2 cups of berries, boil that, then add sugar (she said 1 cup sugar to 2 cups berries, but I did less – I kept adding sugar until it tasted just about right, knowing I’d add more since the pectin was mixed with 1/4 cu sugar per box of pectin or 2.5 cups total), and then add the pectin and boil for 1 more minute and take it off the heat. Then take a little of the jam and put it into a bowl while getting ready to jar the jam. It should set, and if it doesn’t (mine did), add a little more pectin and lemon juice and boil again until it does. I made 2 big batches. I tried to boil the berries for 15 minutes to try to soften the seeds a bit before the sugar was added. The second batch seemed thicker than the first, so my pectin may have been a bit over board but I had to use some old Pamona’s pectin when I realized I only had 8 boxes of Kraft pectin left. I got 88 half pints out of it, and not sure I made a very big dent in the salmonberries but think I’ll make pies from the rest. I made 2 blueberry pies from dough I’d frozen earlier in the week while making the jam, so got some stuff done in the kitchen. Sara came home from school and got a dinner of Stikine duck on while I went to get a flapper replacement to fix the toilet and packed several boxes of fish while I was out that way.