Blueberry picking

My family LOVES blueberries!! A favorite among us all. I was determined to find a place where we could all go and pick blueberries this year (last year we missed it and we missed strawberries this year). I took the kids to a wonderful you-pick farm earlier this summer about an hour away. (Matt's U-Pick in Amanda, Ohio). We had the greatest time and came home with about 24 quarts of blueberries (the kids were a huge help in picking this many berries)! :) We've eaten a lot of them, frozen some of them to use for our favorite whole-wheat oatmeal pancakes, berry cheesecakes, muffins, and any new yummy blueberry recipe that I'd like to try out this year, and I made some delicious homemade blueberry jam. I love to can! Making homemade jam is one of my favorite things to do and I love to hear the "pop" that all of the cans make one by one after they've been taken out of the canner. I tried a new recipe (less sugar blueberry jam) that used juice and honey but I prefer the sugar jam (a lot sweeter). I also made the best blueberry blackberry jam too (Dakota and I picked wild blackberries all over our land (I love that wild blackberries are so abundanct here)... that was a great time spent with Dakota except for the few thorns that dug into my hands). Picking blueberries will now be on our yearly traditions list because that's a memory I want to make every year with my children! :)

*The bushes were covered in bird netting and the kids loved picking the berries from underneath the netting especially Wyatt. :)