Strawberry Fields Forever

So by the amount of strawberries I have picked over the last week, you would think we have fields and fields of plants.  Ok, maybe not that many, but more than this:

It's really not that big of a space, but as you can see the plants are packed in! We definitely planted them closer than the packaging on the plants instructed us, but they were so tiny I had no idea they would grow so much in just a year.  On the far side of the strawberries, we have several blueberry plants, but you can't hardly see them.

One thing that Clay and I have learned about ourselves is that we really enjoy blessing other people by sharing what we grow and/or raise.  We recently got chickens, (that is for another blog post) and I love so much being able to share fresh eggs with my co-workers, my neighbors, people at church, and our favorite masseuse Tom.  I think it is a way that we are able to minister to other people, and help build the type of community that Jesus taught of.  Two years ago we had a very successful garden and Christmas presents to our family members that year included jam, salsa, dilly beans, curried pickled squash, pickled beets, etc. 

So with all these strawberries, I decided I had better get preserving.  I canned 8, 8 oz. jars of jam. And froze several pints.  And fed lots of buggy berries to the chickens....I wonder if our eggs will be sweeter...or have a shade of red to them???

And I gave away two jars at work this morning!