The excitement on Lesley's face as she proudly came in the kitchen door to display to me her first raspberry of the season!
Lesley spent the first 20 years of her life on a berry farm and general market garden in the Dandinong Ranges (Dandinongs), learning to grow, tend and harvest berries of all kinds. Besides raspberries there were strawberries, loganberries, youngberries and boysenberries. On the farm the work had to be done irrespective of the weather: hot or cold, windy or calm, wet or dry there was always some task to be performed.
There was the planting, fetilizing, weeding, trimming, cutting back and tying up the bushes and then after the long wait came harvest. Big days mostly in the hot sun, picking straight into punnets ready for market.
Don, Lesley's father, dammed a small spring in the gully and pumped water for irrigation. The dam was also the family swimming hole.
The family farm was at the foot of the steepest hill in the district. Lesley would often take the produce on the trailer, pulled by the TEA20 Ferguson tractor (Fergie) to meet the carrier who took the farm produce to Victoria Market in Melbourne.
Such an enterprizing young girl, Lesley discovered that she could throw the Fergie out of gear on the return trip and get home much quicker, having a great time as well.
Lesley grows raspberries in our back yard and freezes the excess fruit for later use.
She still has raspberries in the freezer from last season and right now has the boiler containing fruit and sugar sitting on the stove ready for another batch of her prize winning jam. The raspberries have thawed overnight and she's primed, ready to go. By the end of the day she'll have 18 jars of jam ready as Christmas gifts for the neighbours, family and friends with more to come when we buy some more jars.
I'll do a new photo story showing the process with some good tips from the expert, and post it at Make Raspberry Jam.