i hope ya like jammin too

M calls me jamlady, or more accurately jaaaamlady! he thinks it's cute...i don't.

he does it because of this:

clever, huh?
i do however think he's cute. see:

he only calls me this from june-september so i guess i can live with it. those are the months when these dreads are most likely over a copper jam pot because it's jamming season in the northeast. if you haven't read my other new blog tigress in a pickle than an introduction is in order: for half the year we live 7 stories above industrial sprawl, in lovely LIC but in early spring we pack up mahfouz & thor

and head up to the berkshires in massachusettes where we let our inner farmers out - and we grow our own eats. it all started in 2005 when M brought home a couple of scraggly tomato plants and nurtured them throughout the summer. it was very charlie brown of him. i watched from the window, inside. eventually he came in the house with big, ripe, juicy tomatoes... in 2006 i said i wanted to try... in 2007 i had a 4 ft high and 1 foot low fence put in and said we were going to sustain ourselves the whole summer on what we grew. In 2008 i ordered 8 fruit trees (8 charlie browns to be exact) and started to design 'the orchard' ...cause that's how i roll.

M thinks it must be hard being me. i think it is harder for him.

sustaining oneself on a garden harvest is not a problem during the summer months, but i wanted to see how far i could take it (note: common theme) and for that i had to get crafty. so i started to read everything i could find about jamming, pickling, preserving, fermenting and whatever it took to stretch the keeping quality of what we grew. basically, my summer was jammin'.

ok, just so you know; i (we) have a day job, that turns into a night job and a day job again with no sleep in between sometimes (see my profile cause i know you're curious). and another thing; jamming is seasonal. so, i have every intention of posting regularly; the jam experiments, and all the wealth of knowledge (ahem) i have acquired via my obsessive tendencies. but you know, life gets in the way of good intentions sometimes, so there may be lapses...did i mention my obsessive tendencies? we may be just fine.