Our Jamming Sessions Pay Off: Our Jam Gets Discovered.

The pressure is on...

As you know, we have been happily jamming during the early Summer season. Bob & I or rather The Jammers are like a well oiled machine even starting with picking the main ingredient, the fruit. Bob has borrowed a ladder high enough to reach the upper echelons of the cherry tree because for some odd reason the plumpest and nicest ones dangle and dazzle from up there.

The other afternoon we set off on a cherry run. Amazingly the folk who own cherry trees don't make use of them. They might pick the lower branches, but the rest will rot on the tree ( by the way, even in this cherry growing area a Kilogram of cherries cost about 7 euros in the shops! ). Never mind, The Jammers are here. As we only have the one long ladder, I am usually whiling my time away by leaning on it to make sure Schatzi is safe up in the branches. When it is stable, I might even shoot the breeze with people walking past. Oh, the life!

Two weeks ago we started the first batch of cherries. Luckily the various trees around the village take turns ripening. Our two neigbours on either side offered us their harvest and of course we took it with pleasure. As a Thank You, Bob dropped off a bottle of our cherry jam with each of them. The thing is, usually no one ever tells us if it was good or not. My Mum of course is honest and tells me if it was not nice or had mould on top.

Bob went to a meeting with the chaps ( fire brigade ) and came home late but excited to tell me some feedback regarding our jams. He had overheard our neighbour telling a friend about how fabulous the jam made by Biggi & Bob was! Wow. Her kids were home from Vienna over the weekend, and she had run out of her usual jam. Sunday breakfast they were all sitting around the table when she remembered our jam. Apparently, her kids kind of turned up their noses at this homemade stuff and declined to try it.

Shrugging her shoulders at this, she opened our jar and put generous lashings of it on her bread. She took one bite and was hooked. Her ecstatic reaction to our jam tempted her kids to give it a bash and the rest is history. Apparently her son was so taken by our homemade cherry jam that he almost wrestled her for the half eaten jar because he wanted to take it back to Vienna....Music to our ears.

Bob gleefully took another two jars the next morning and dropped them off. When I met my neighbour on Sunday, I told her how happy I was to hear about our jamming success. Well, she added the cherry on top for me:

" Biggi, can you believe it, my husband opened one of your jams, took one bite and loved it so much he took a spoon and almost ate the whole jar."

Bob has been re-invigorated by this complement and even last night we were jamming up a batch.

Biggi

Isn't it just a fabulous place to pick cherries? The ladder was stable enough, and I meandered about chatting to a few people.

Isn't Schatzi the handsomest cherry picker ever!

A view to the upper echelons of cherries.

This was the view a meter to the right of the tree. The three smoke signals from above?