Canning party starring blueberry jam

This past Tuesday Sofia and I met up with good friends and their kids to can some blueberry jam. The instigator of this jam session was Pamela from Desert Homespun. You can check out her post about the jam making here.

We when got there she had already done all of the hard work of prepping the jars and lids.

We split up the different tasks of jam making.

Amy measured and processed the blueberries, Pamela cooked the jam and filled the jars.

I wiped the rims clean and helped put on lids and rings. Abby brought her sweet new born Ruby along for us to all coo at.

There were a huge amount of blueberries. I think this was half of them. I should have taken a picture before Amy started blending away.

Here's the first batch ready to come out of the water bath.

Amy and Pamela did all the hot work of putting the jars in and taking them out of the water bath.

I realize now that I spent more time taking pictures then helping out! I did hold sweet little Ruby for a long time, does that count? Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the mountain of jam we made as Sofia was quite tried and ready to go home by then. 71 half-pints of jam. Wow!

What a great morning of chatting and canning. It felt kind of like we were stepping back in time a bit, a community of women coming together to preserve the harvest with children running all around. It made for an experience I won't soon forget.

Here are two pictures I got of the kiddos. I got to wrapped up in jam making and documenting to get the other kids. But Pamela has some really cute ones of them!

Blue eyed Owen above and below Sofia tending to baby Ruby like she was her big sister.

Oh yes, and since that mountain of jam I took home wasn't enough, I decided it would be a great idea to make more raspberry jam, so I stopped by the store and got 4 half flats of organic raspberries while they still had them. This time I printed pretty labels for them.

Have you canned anything lately?