Jammin'

This morning Dennis and I made red plum jam – 7 pints of it plus about a cupful in a bowl. I hadn’t made jam all summer because the fruit crop, along with almost every other crop from garden or field, failed this year. The weather has been mean to us. Too cold, too hot, too dry, plant diseases, all conspired to disappoint.

Our stock of homemade jam was getting low. There wasn’t enough left to last until the next growing season. We had options. We could buy many kinds of jam and jelly at the grocery store. Nevertheless, I wanted to make our own jam, so I bought 5 pounds of red plums and a bag of sugar. 

Financially it hardly made sense. The plums and sugar cost about eight dollars and the cost of heating our stove burners to cook the jam, and sterilize the jars and lids increased the cost. We both spent two and a half hours completing the task, including clean up. The value of the product was just $35. Homemade jam was not a profitable use of our time.

So, we asked each other, why did we do it? We found good reasons. We had worked for the satisfaction of carrying on tradition, the pleasure of seeing our handiwork, the ultimate pleasure of smearing the jam on our morning toast, and the perhaps irrational joy of doing it because we know how. Having made jam and jelly so many times, we move like clockwork, each of us knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. That, alone, made jammin’ worthwhile.

Copyright 2018 by Shirley Domer