Filling our freezer

I love early summer! We're enjoying all sorts of fruits, and stocking the freezer for later, and the best part of it is how much of this we're doing for free!

First were the strawberries from our own garden. We ate berries each evening when they came in, and then cut up however many didn't get eaten and put them in the freezer. I think we ended up with about a quart there. Not anywhere near the quantity that we typically use in our smoothies over the course of the year. Darn those slugs!

James found a plum tree at work that no one seemed interested in. . . so home came those free plums to be pitted and frozen. The final count there-three tubbies of 1 1/2 quarts each. Those go into smoothies because they're a bit too tart to eat plain.

Peaches showed up at the farmers' market last weekend, and when we asked for a bushel we were told we had to wait until early August when the freestone peaches come in. But then he offered us seconds at two quarts for $5, rather than $7 a quart for the pretty ones. Some of the seconds were bruised, some just had spots on the skin. We only ended up with three that were too bruised to salvage the majority of them. Final count-over 18 lbs of pieces to freeze for $15. Those are primarily for smoothies, but will also be used in cobblers during the winter. We'll continue collecting and processing seconds through the season. It's much easier to do the smaller batches than it was to do the whole bushel+ we did over three days last summer.

Best of all, the wine berries (wild raspberries) are ripe. We made the twins join us to pick them before they went over to their dad's house weekend before last, and brought home a quart and a half. James and I picked another three quarts on Sunday, and James had done another picking trip one evening while I was at kung fu. It looks like something in the neighborhood of five quarts in the freezer, not including all the ones eaten fresh. There's nothing quite like berries that make it from branch to belly in ten seconds! We haven't taken bowls to pick berries on our walks since Sunday, but have each picked and eaten almost a cup each evening. Life is good!

Next up. . .blackberries! (We found the first dozen or so ripe ones last night, so I'm sure James is going to be out picking those while I'm at my sisters. He's the real blackberry fan in the house, but Samuel gives him some good competition for the berries.)