Crazy about cranberries

I had to travel back for cranberries! I told my husband I want some more cranberries from my land. It was a bright autumn Friday when my husband sent me a message to work suggesting on travelling there when I come home. I was ready to go!

Cranberries are strange. They grow on wet sphagnum, or peat moss, and on my land they may have dry hay or fallen leaves on them because they grow on the waste land on the shore.

It is not always easy to see them at first and then suddenly you see them a lot. When you kneel down and dig the moss where you found some, you may find more from beneath.

When I was crawling there on the moss the cranberries spoke to my mind: Sometimes you have to kneel down in life to see closer, sometimes you have to dig to find more! 

The day was wonderful. The new boundary mark stood there bold, a spider froze when my berry picking fingers came across with it, I got my berries, we had our fire and the snack and when the dark came we headed for home.

                                      

A few days later I cooked the cranberries into delicious jam. I made both with and without cinnamon.

Did I overdo it a bit now for I also made labels and glued them on jars and went to buy red cotton fabric to cover the lids? Jars as pretty as berries!

                            

                             

                                       

Embers and cranberry jam

I was so excited when I looked around. The forest management association had put their men to work. The parts of the forest, where my dad had had small pine trees planted after a severe storm had destroyed georgeus full grown pines years ago, had now been thinned out. How a pleasing sight this was to me. To see the renewed pine forest get enough light and space to be able to grow to its full measure was to me a proof that the work my father started went on. Although I have a forest clearing saw of my own I don't know anything about forestry really, so doing that kind of work on my own is not my cup of tea at this phase. I haven't had time either for whenever we have been able to travel to my piece of land we have concentrated on clearing the lot and left the forest management to the association. Thank God for them!

Our younger son was with us. Weeks had passed and a minor storm had felled a pine over our road so my husband started by sawing the trunk to let us get through by car. The surveyor had placed the new boundary mark all right and piles of branches and trunks on the building site were waiting to be cleared. We had decided to burn them. The weather was just right. It had rained but now it was cloudy. It looked so great to see the building site clearing step by step as the fire was burning. The embers were glowing red hot and impressive at the end. We were pleased to see what we had accomplished and we finished by quenching the embers by carrying water all over them.

What a pity, I didn't have time to pick cranberries which had ripened. But a week later I got my chance when we passed close by anyway and decided to take some extra time and pick some. Yellow autumn colours together with evergreen trees and blue sky looked perfect. And perfect was the jam I made of cranberries. Delicious!

Cranberry jam with cinnamon

Ingredients

1 litre cranberries
1 dl water
3 dl sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Measure the ingredients in a pot and cook for ten minutes. Pour the cranberry jam into glass jars.