My 15yr old son, and I made serviceberry jam today for the first time. We have three trees we planted out back, about 8 years ago, and we have picked the berries every year. I thought about making jam out of them last year, so I bought some small jars and pectin, and got some recipes from surejell and other websites. For some reason I did not do it. One only gets the best berries for about a week though, as the birds will be after them also.

But this year we did it. My son helped me pick the best berries, mashed them up and stirred them on the stove, but no help in cleaning up. (ohwell).

It was great! He really enjoyed it as well...maybe more than me. I was a bit clumsy as I had never done it before, and was kind of going by two recipes, but it worked out well. We did the low sugar version and it is still plenty sweet. It was more or less a small run, as the two 8oz jars will last us a long time.

The seed hardness seems to vary from year to year. This year they were about average. Though my son commented that he could not taste them in the jam.

I highly recommend it to anyone. Lots of recipes out there.

It was so cool to pick them and 45 minutes later be spreading jam on toast. Fresh, no preservatives, no artificial this, or that either, for that matter! Edible landscaping at it's best.

Always an. . .Angel