The Quintessential Summer Fruit
Turns out, the Maritimes are having a lousy year for strawberries; too much rain and not enough heat in the spring to really kick off a good strawberry season, so it feels great to be able to pick anything at all, let alone fourteen pounds of strawberries.
While about 2 lbs are destined for a strawberry wine and at least 4 lbs for the freezer to help us through the winter in case we undertake another 100 Mile Challenge, there was plenty of strawberries to go around and lots of strawberry preserves destined for the Sackville Market and online market. We have:
Chipotle Strawberry Jam
Strawberry with Vanilla Bean
Strawberry Jam (made in the French style of slowly drawing out the juices and keeping the berries whole)
Strawberry Margarita Jam
Vive La Fraise!
uncanny preserves -- thinking outside the jar 
strawberry wine! I think ima need me some of that.
Hey Maggie! I let you know how it turns out; it needs a couple weeks of just “brew” time. We’ve made elderberry sherry before, but it was too hot when we made it and it killed a lot of yeast. It turned out to only be about 5% and uber-sweet; we couldn’t drink it. We also made our own wine last fall from our L’Acadie grapes, but once again, without a light refractor, we picked them a couple weeks too early and it was way too tannic to drink (so I made the Mulled Red Wine Jelly).
Fingers crossed, we’ll have homebrewed SOMETHING delicious! 🙂
I can’t wait to hear how it goes. My husband is just getting into making wines. I’m going to let him take this project on by himself! lol But of course I’ll give him all the advice I think he needs and he’ll smile pleasantly, and then go on to do what it was he planned to do before I offered the advice.
I know this sounds counterintuitive, but I appreciate your sharing about your ‘non successes’ in the process. It can be discouraging when those in the diy’ers community only share their successes–then the real process we undertake are full of ‘no, not that way, let’s try this way’ before we get it right. We have only been farming, and producing for a little under 3 years, and that’s been the greatest challenge; accepting the learning curve. I bet that needs to be the title of a blog post –lol Coming soon on notes from maggie’s farm– Accepting the Learning Curve.
Thanks for your reply!
Strawberry wine and chipotle strawbery jam sound awesome! I’m also fascinated by strawberry jam ‘in the French method’………
A la Christine Ferber. I keep the berries whole or halved and let them macerate for 24 hrs with sugar and lemon juice. Then I strain the juice, boil it until it reaches the gel stage and add the fruit back in. I’ve used this method to do Strawberry with Mint and Black Pepper and Strawberry with Balsamic and Black Pepper. It’s a great way to not use pectin and keep the integrity of the berry and it’s essential flavour. Low in sugar, too.