Eat The Yard

To be honest, at first I hated the tree that grows like a weed beside the Silk Oak in our lower yard.  A gangly skeleton in winter and the plainest Jane at the height of spring, it called little attention to itself in any season.  Its three trunks testify to others having felt the same — and having gotten further along in their intentions with an ax than I ever did.

Last spring I took a chainsaw to it, slicing clean through one of the trunks.  I intended to cut the whole thing down, but stopped short when the pile of trimmings got high and I realized I had no plan for what to do with the space once cleared.  I decided wanting to cut a tree down wasn’t a good enough reason to do so.

And it’s a good thing, too, because it turns out it’s a Mulberry Tree, likely a Riviera or Kaester (M. nigra) variety.

In the past I’d never thought much about the heavy load of long, deep purple-black fruits that weighed the wide canopy down between April and June.  I assumed — for no good reason — that the berries were nothing we’d want to eat and left them to the birds.  Perhaps I didn’t think of homes as coming with something so huge and edible.  My mom, who grew up eating mulberries from the trees in her neighborhood, suggested the type of tree it might be, and with a little research I found her to be right.

That was last year.  This year, we made jam.

Our mulberries are the first crop we’ve had that realistically calls for preserving some portion of the abundant harvest.  The 20-foot-tall and 30-foot-wide tree grows multiple clusters of fruit on every branch, so harvesting takes time and a ladder.  It also takes a gentle touch, since the delicate berries would just as soon squish as be plucked whole.  A better method might be to lay out a clean tarp or expendable sheet and then shake the ripe fruit from the tree, but our space doesn’t allow for this.  I filled a massive bowl in an hour of picking and didn’t even make a dent in the overall yield.

It took two tries to turn it into to jam.

The first batch looked like tar, spread like tar, and chewed like tar.  I ended up stirring the fruit-sugar mix for 45 minutes seeking the illusive “jelly-like” consistency the recipe said would indicate a finished product.  Turns out boiling hot jam doesn’t ever really look like jam in a jar.  Kind of like melted anything looks different than if it wasn’t melted.  “Jelly-like” comes 24 hours later — after the mix has cooled.  I also tried to use the fruit’s natural pectin this time around, rather than an additive, by including 15 – 20 percent unripened berries.

The second effort, after some additional reading, was at a boil for fewer than five minutes, just long enough to dissolve the sugar-pectin mix.  Overall, making jam is relatively easy … when done right.

1. Clean the canning jars with warm soapy water, submerge the jars and lids in boiling water, then turn down the heat and let them stand in the hot water.
2. Mix four cups of de-stemmed (this takes a while) and crushed fruit with 1/4-cup of lemon juice and one teaspoon of calcium water in a large pot.  Bring to a boil.
3. Thoroughly mix two cups of sugar and two teaspoons of pectin and stir it into the boiling fruit mix.  Stir for two minutes then let it return to a boil.  Remove the not-jelly-like liquid from heat.
4. Pour the jam into the hot canning jars up to 1/4 inch from the top, clean rims and threads meticulously, and fasten the lids.
5. Return the filled jars to the boiling water and submerge for 10 minutes.  Turn off the heat and let them stand in warm water for five minutes.  Let them sit for 24 hours out of the water before eating or saving.

We now have two jars of mulberry jam ready for eating — or storing.  Unopened, they should be good for up to a year.  Opened, they should last about three weeks refrigerated.  I tried some on toast today, and it looks, spreads, and tastes like jam.  The mulberry is a surprisingly sweet fruit, and the jam is no different.

We shared some of this second batch with mom, and will make more when the last round of berries come ripe later this month.

Tags: canning, preserves, recipes, seasonal eating, summer crop