Berry to syrup

Foraging and Canning with the Last Pale Americans, August 23, 2020 by James LaFond

In four hours over two days I picked four shopping bags of berries from the sides of roads in Kamas Valley, Utah, listed in the order of proportions:

-Choke cherries 87%

-Elderberries 5%

-Oregon grape 2%

-June berries 3%

-Black currants 3%

This filled a bushel and four of us spent 2 hours sorting and cleaning the berries.

Then three of us spend two hours cooking and rendering the berries.

Then the next day three of us spent two hours canning the berries into syrup.

I can’t eat the sugar without returning to the sloth diet. However, I ate the mash, a pint of it, and it was great. The sugar is being used as a preservative and as a means to get slaves of the American factor diet to eat it. I would just can the juice, which I am told is possible

Deb supervised.

I washed jars and lids and dishes.

Bob stirred the berry juice, lemon juice, pectin and sugar on the stove.

Bob and I then poured the syrup into a pitcher and I poured it into jars, which Deb wiped off. I then put the lids on the jars and screwed on the bands and turned the jars upside down to that the hot liquid within would help seal the jar.

We then cleaned up, labelled and dated and boxed the jars, having made 30 pints, 4 half pints and one ¼ pint jar of syrup.

I am the picker and helper. Since then we have canned green beans we picked from the garden and pickles and pickled vegetables from produce got at the grocery store. We will be canning more recipes and making apple cider instead of apple pie filling this year with the wealth of apples from the tree in the yard. Elderberry and Oregon grape will be the next batch of syrup. Rose hips are two weeks out and my scouting tells me I should get a dry bushel this year hiking mountain trails and logging roads.

Bob and Deb’s children and grandchildren have done well and refuse to eat home canned foods. Still, the old folks think that if times get bad enough that the home survival arts of their parents will once again have a place.

Canning supplies are increasingly hard to get and prices rising. The unthinkable is coming into being, that the Collective God of American Humanity might one day have to worry about feeding, might need to step down out of retard Olympus to engage in the despised act of survival.