Chokecherries, Pickles, Beans, and the Goodness of God

I have been eye-balling the chokecherry trees all year hoping they would produce some fruit for chokecherry jelly.  I noticed that they were ripe about a week ago but have been busy picking blackberries, cukes, beans, and squash.  I finally had a couple of minutes to scoot out and pick enough for a batch of jelly.  I make one batch a year if I can because only two people in our family like it. 


The jelly is delicious on hot biscuits. The taste is kind of sweet with a tart aftertaste.  Chokecherries are also high in vitamin C.  If you want harvest chokecherries, you have to beat the wild animals to them.  Birds love them and will strip a tree in no time.  Lucky for us there are 4-5 trees along our pasture and two of them really produced a good crop this year.  You know the adage about the grass being greener?  I was able to pick plenty of berries but really wanted to pick all the "really nice" ones at the top of the tree.  Short of a 15 foot ladder that wasn't going to happen so I had to be happy with a picture of the nice fruit.

Here are the chokecherries I picked.  They were placed in the sink, washed, and the pink berries pulled out.  I cooked them in a pot until the were tender and put them through a Foley food mill.  The juice was then put through cheesecloth overnight without squeezing it.  I then added honey, low sugar pectin mix, cooked, and ladled into small jelly jars. The jars were then water bath canned for 10 minutes to seal.














My daughter came home from her grandparents and helped me pick beans, unfortunately she picked the black beans we planted for dry beans.  I say unfortunately but it really was no big deal since there are plenty of beans coming and we could can them for winter.  So we put up some beans.................. Grandma also sent some rhubarb from NY so while we were doing the beans it seemed like a good idea to pick what rhubarb we had in the garden and can a few jars for winter as well. 


This is so simple, clean and cut the rhubarb into small pieces, place in a large bowl and cover with 1-2 cups sugar to draw out the juices.  Let sit for 4 hours then put in a pot and cook until tender.  Place in sterilized jars and seal in hot water bath for 12 minutes.

Here picture of the corn that was blown down in the storm a few weeks ago. My son is standing by it and he is over 6 feet tall.  God did answer our prayers and hopefully we will enjoy some corn this year..