Strawberry Picking and Freezer Jam

I have been in Activity Days for just a little over a year now. Which means I should, theoretically, have 24 ideas to share with you. But as I look back through my files I'm realizing I really don't have that!

I mean, I did do 24 activities... but some of them were in the "did that, won't do it again" category. Activities get put in that category for two basic reasons: they were too much work or they didn't turn out that great in real life. (Mostly the first one. :D)

More and more (I have a part time job, a kid in college, a kid on a mission and two high schoolers still at home, plus an additional calling as a Primary teacher) I am going for SIMPLE in my activities.

This may seem like a no-brainer, but really I am the kind of person who loves nothing more than a complex, color coordinated activity. So, I do have SEVERAL activities that are kind of over the top waiting in the wings. But this activity was fairly simple: strawberry picking, followed by making strawberry freezer jam.

Now I say this was a simple activity, and it was... but it did take some thought.

1. Location: First of all you need a place where they have U Pick strawberries. I live in the Midwest, and there are two U Pick places within about 20 minutes of my house. However, there used to be four... seems like these places are kind of going the way of the drive in movie theater. There may be someone in your ward with a strawberry patch in their garden who would be willing to let you come pick, if commercial picking is not available. As a last resort you can nix the picking part, pick up some fresh berries from a Farmer's Market and just make jam.
2. Transportation: If you have a U Pick place you need a way to get all your girls there, and have an appropriate amount of adult supervision. You will also need parent signed permission slips,  and the approval of your bishopric to travel. If you have a lot of girls (again, my group has between 8-12 regularly attending) you need more than one vehicle, and you probably also need at least 1 leader or parent for every 4-5 girls.
3. Costs: the berries themselves; freezer jam pectin; Ball canning jars, rings and lids. I ended up paying about $15 for the berries; I got a dozen small canning jars with lids and rings for $10 and we made two batches of jam, with the freezer jam pectin mix costing about $3 per batch. This is not a low cost activity, although it could be lower cost if you can take advantage of someone's garden, or if you have the canning jars donated or already available . For us, the picking was not the greatest (it was not a super good year for strawberries) but each girl enjoyed picking and picked about a pint of berries. This was more than we needed for jam, and so I sent home some of the berries with each girl.
4. Non-traditional time requirements: This is a summertime (obviously, strawberries grow in the summer) activity, and we did it mid day and it took more than 90 minutes. We met at my home, drove 20 minutes to the patch, only picked for about 20 minutes (although the girls would have loved to stay longer, I couldn't afford for them to pick all the berries they wanted, and we easily got more than we needed for jam in that time.), and then drove back 20 minutes. That was an hour right there, then we needed to wash, de-stem, and mash the berries, mix in the pectin, and place the jam in jars.

Once we got the berries picked and got back to my house I split the girls up into different tasks.

• A few girls dumped the berries in a sink filled with cold water and swirled them around, then picked them out, leaving any bugs, dirt, grass or icky berries in the trash can as they went. Despite asking the girls to pick carefully, they were young and inexperienced and we got plenty of pink berries, bug eaten berries, and etc. Plus, it just really was NOT a good year for strawberries. So in addition to "cleaning" the sink girls were in charge of quality control.
• A few girls were in charge of de-steming the berries. The cut off the leaves and stems with stem pincers or butter knives, according to their preference.
• Another few girls were in charge of mashing berries-- by hand, with a potato masher. This was tougher than it sounds, and those girls needed aprons as this job was juicy and messy.
• Finally the last few girls were in charge of taking the mashed berries (they had to wait till everyone else had done their job) and mixing in the freezer jam pectin and ladling the jam into jars.
• Everyone was asked to help clean up. HAVE THE GIRLS HELP CLEAN UP. If they are old enough to make the mess, they are old enough to clean it. The fact that they don't want to, they want to go play (who doesn't, really?) just makes it that much more important to teach this responsibility. 

Each girl wrote their name on the lid of their jar and took the jam home with them. It needs to set in the freezer about 24 hours before it is jam, and when you unfreeze it, you need to eat it within a couple weeks. This was not a problem-- that jam was DELICIOUS and the girls were so proud of it!

As always, we had a few girls gone for extended summer vacations in another state and we kindly made jam for them and presented it to them when they got back. Which was really nice of us! :)

Not every parent can drop their daughter off mid day. I tried to be sensitive to this and offered to pick up girls whose parents could not drop them off. We left around 10 a.m. and were finished around 12:30 with everything, so it did take longer than 90 minutes.

While the patch was open in the evening at our regular activity time, we would have been finished VERY late, and the mosquitos are terrible in the evening, so daytime was our choice.

It would have been difficult to pick the berries one week (which would have been very close to a full activity) and make the jam the next week, simply because strawberries don't store that well. You have to commit to the longer activity to make it really work.

BONUS: I always recommend trying anything you're going to do with the girls on your own first. I picked some berries and made freezer jam the week before-- just to time the process and get a good eyeball on how many berries we needed and how many jars of jam each batch would make. (Each batch using 4 cups fruit made about 4 of the small jars of jam.) SO-- I had jam already made and fresh bread baked and when we were done we had fresh bread and strawberry jam and WOW, was it good! :)