Sour Cherry Jam Adventures

Sour cherries are hard to find so, I popped into our local Facebook Buy and Sell and found baskets advertised – both pick your own and already picked so, we went on a little adventure to 7th Street Louth and not only did we find sour cherries, we made afew new friends. The first, was the owner, friendly and a story teller – he has sheep so, we will be able to get a couple of beautiful fleece when he shears his sheep next spring – he also gave us a tip about hiswhere to find apricots for my next “jam” session. We met his Mexican migrant worker and my husband, Charles had a great (and surprising for the worker) conversation with him in Spanish. Then we met the very charming (and as yet unnamed) goat. He followed us right into the car. I guess he liked us.

Sour Cherry Jam
2 1/2 lbs of pitted sour cherries (we tripled our recipe with 3 – 4 quart baskets of cherries)
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
2 cups of sugar

Pit the cherries (I used a small pair of scissors to clip the pits out). You can also buy cherry pitters.
Place the fruit in a heavy-bottomed pot along with the lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.
Cook the cherry mixture, stirring to avoid boil-overs for about 30 minutes until the fruit has fallen apart.
Add sugar. Continue cooking and stirring until the jam reaches a steady 220 F.
Turn off the heat and ladle jam into prepared jars. Wipe rims and make sure you have a 1/4″ headspace. Process for 10 minutes. I got 14 jars of jam. YUMMY!!