Spreading myself a little too thin: Picking blackberries is a real thorn in my side

 So...channeling my inner "Little House on the Prairie" vibe and risking the tornado warning, I skipped out to our blackberry patch to pick the three and a half cups required for my freezer jam recipe. Yeah. I already know what you're thinking. No self-respecting prairie princess would even consider entering freezer jam in the county fair to be judged among their home-canned counterparts. Freezer jam is like trying to pass a store-bought cake mix off as scratch:  A Betty Crocker counterfeit. Well...Caroline Ingalls can kiss my pre-packaged, perfectly-preserved posterior. Freezer jam is my Everest. This was a big deal for me. It required a LOT of revving myself up. I felt like a fraud just trying to locate the Sure Gel in the store. 

Allow me to pause here to beg Caroline Ingalls' forgiveness. My insecurities got the better of me and I lashed out without provocation. While Caroline might be silently appalled by my utter lack of homespun knowledge and my vigorous avoidance of any and all activities attached to manual labor, you and I both know that this hard-working, gentle, kind, Christian woman would be cheering me on. 

So there I was, prancing out to the patch...of which I have a long and complicated history. I heroically battled two mosquitoes and a sweat-fly as I gleaned my garden beneath the harsh glare of the 3 o'clock sun. Fifteen minutes later, I was back in my kitchen...realizing my mistake. The recipe required three and a half cups of MASHED blackberries. Oh no.

Clearly, this was further evidence that I was NOT cut out for cooking.

I couldn't go out there again.

I could hear my blackberry patch poking fun of me from here.

Less than a week ago, my daughters were home, in their glory, eating their fill right from this over-flowing fountain of fruit. What a wonderful tribute, to be able to resurrect that moment, months from now, as I smoothed a blanket of blackberry jam on my morning toast. I did not watch my husband wrestle that thorny dragon of deliciousness into submission and then joust with it each week on the lawn mower to only eat a handful of berries each July. 

Well...if Caroline was able to travel, in a covered wagon, from Wisconsin, facing untoward dangers and hardships, to settle in South Dakota, I could certainly check my cell phone for any updates regarding the tornado warning and walk the 40 odd feet back out to the patch to finish the job I had set out to do. 

I did it. 

I picked. I mashed. I mixed. I sifted. I stirred.

I successfully made blackberry freezer jam but realized that I would have to reconcile myself with the fact that I would not have flourished during our nation's formative years:  I just wouldn't have blended in.