Last week’s column was about how the Napeague mosquitoes have been missing this summer. It was only minutes after submitting it for editing that one of the staff quipped that if I wanted mosquitoes, I could come over to her house in Springs. Then, Thursday, as if to say, “We’re still here,” a hatch of smallish buzzers arrived.
For a day or two I slapped at the blood drinkers around my ankles, but then they faded away. I’ll stay with my observation that something precipitous is happening in the insect world; in any nuisance-normal year, I would be sprinting to the car from the house in the morning. On Tuesday, I had my coffee outside, sitting vulnerable to all attackers on the front steps. This was strange, since there had been a lot of rain lately, in ordinary years a sure sign that mosquitoes were on the wing.
—
As I mentioned last week, it looks like it will be a terrific wild blackberry season. In fact, taking a break from writing this morning, I started a batch of jam made from berries I had picked on Sunday. I had gone out early, before the heat of the day began. Wild blackberry thickets are thorn-ringed redoubts for catbirds and the like and not easily entered without some kind of defense. I wore well-worn jeans and a long-sleeve shirt and a leather work glove on my left hand while the right was free to remove berries from their stems. Instead of a pail, I carry a gallon water jug with its top cut off, into which the berries go.
Making jam is not as intimidating as it might sound. The recipe is basically berries and sugar cooked to a rolling boil then ladled into clean glass jars still hot from a sterilizing bath in the preserving kettle. After the lids are screwed down, the jam jars go back into boiling water for 10 minutes of bacteria-killing heat. The key, in my experience, is working in small batches, about six jars at a time.
For a source of information, there is nothing better than “Putting Food By,” now in an updated fifth edition. For what it is worth, my copy of the second edition is from 1975; I should probably buy the newest one, but I am nostalgic to a fault and the old one has served me well over several decades. Avoid recipes on the internet unless they are from a reputable source, such as a state cooperative extension. No one has contracted botulism on my watch, so far as I know, and I intend to keep it that way. When jamming, heat should be your very best friend.