Jars of Jelly

​I know we can all go and grab a jar of jelly off the grocery store shelf and...it's a lot less work.... 
BUT! Where we live the roadsides and ditches are FULL of fruit producing trees and shrubs, all growing wild. 🤗 We go out often and check our "spots" to see how things are ripening. That means beautiful drives through the back roads, which we love. Then as the fruits begin to ripen WELL, We ladies LOVE to berry pick! We grab several 5 gallon buckets and the kids, we jump into the old farm jeep and get to picken'! Thank you Mother Nature!! Of course, you can get pretty hungry pickin' berries so we eat them too. :) We (hopefully) get lots of buckets of fruits to make into jellies, jams, pancake syrup and wine. Such a fun time! We just drive around all the old backroads with the kids as our "spotters" and pick black raspberries, mullberies, chokecherries, plums and (my favorite) Elderberries. All of these grow wild around us. When we aren't able to collect enough berries for jelly we make malts or ice cream toppings. It's always a Win! The Elderberries are amazing. We have to stay ahead of all the wild animals that love them too. The berries have to be picked at just the right time for the perfect taste and they're so small, about half the size of a pea, that it takes several pounds of them to make our jellies. The ones in the picture have a long way to go, when ripe they're a deep dark purple. Elderberries are a lot of work, you have to sit and pick them off the heads ONE berry at a time. It's a tediously long process. The rewards are worth it though. If you've ever had homemade Elderberry jelly, pancake syrup or a glass of elderberry wine you know what I'm talking about! Delicious!! There's a lot of family memories packed into each jar of jelly. It usually starts with "Who wants jelly on their toast!" Remember when......