Grace's 2013 Highlights

Stationery Card

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2012 Photo Highlights for Katie

Year Of Happy New Year's Card

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2012 Photo Highlights for Grace

Our Moments Christmas Card

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Strawberry Syrup

4 pounds fresh local strawberries
1-1/2 pounds turbinado sugar
2 ounces lemon juice

Get your honkin' boiling water canning pot boiling.  Wash your canning jars & lids.  I recommend new canning jars & canning lids for best results.  After washing, I put my sterile canning jars into the oven - laying down on their sides - at 225 degrees F.  They stay there 'til I'm ready to fill 'em.  Yes, most of the time I do remember to use hot pads to take them out ;)

Rinse strawberries in cool water.  Remove caps.  Weigh out four pounds.  Puree with lemon juice.  Put liquids in large stainless steel pot (I use my 4-1/2 quart Revere Ware soup pot).  Add sugar.  Stir thoroughly.  Bring to boil - boil for five minutes.

Remember to use your hot pads to protect your fingers & hands when working with hot stuff!

Ladle extremely hot strawberry syrup carefully into extremely hot sterile canning jars (I leave just over 1/4" head space since this is in the jam/jelly/syrup category), wipe rims, add two-part canning lids.  Very carefully put in canning rack that's hovering over boiling water in honkin' boiling water canning pot.  Once rack is full, carefully lower into the boiling water.  Make sure there's at least a couple of inches of water over the jar lids.  Put canning lid pot on.  Once the water returns to a good boil, set timer for 20 minutes.  Turn off heat & remove lid.

My Ball Blue Book says to use a jar lifter to remove the jars from the canner and set them on a towel to cool.

I have had successful results using my long handled wooden spoons to get my canning rack handles above the boiling water & lifting the rack so that it can sit on the rim of the canner for a moment.  Then, with my hands & fingers protected in my hot pads, I carry the full canning rack of extremely hot jars over to my towel-covered area & lift jars one by one onto the towel.  Then I place another clean dry towel over the jars.  Then the glorious sounds:  pop, pop, pop.  Those are the lids sealing.  I love those sounds!

I let the jars sit overnight (or 12 hours at least).  I put labels on every jar with name of product (strawberry syrup), date, ingredients and a note in bold reminding folks "please refrigerate after opening".  I make sure that note is loud and clear!  And jars that have lids that didn't seem to seal properly go in fridge and are used within a day or two.  The rest go in the cardboard box with dividers that the canning jars came in, with labels on the outside of the box (I just print extra ingredient labels & tape those on the box).  I generally give some of these for gifts, but we try to keep some for us to flavor plain yogurt or pancakes or whatever through the year.

Sometimes Books Can Help Us Through Times of Transition

Ever since I can remember it seems like I've been "learning the hard way" - you know, do it wrong the first time, and then figure out THAT doesn't work so redirecting into another way.  I reckon if I wasn't such a rebel and maybe a better listener I'd master the art of "learning the easy way."  I'm not talking about "book-learning" or "formal education."  I'm talking about LIFE.

But in the last few years some books have come along to help me through some transitions or struggles.  Of course, my Bible has been my mainstay since my late 20's, but  there have been some recent books I would like to recommend with caution.

Sharon's Pearl book is one.  This book came along at a time when some of my relationships were in transition.  Not so much my immediate family relationships, but more distant family.  Sharon so very bravely shared some very personal struggles in such a way as to help the reader to see there is a path to forgiveness and healing.  Sharon helped me to understand that forgiving someone is not approval of what they had done, or permission to continue to do, but simply forgiving them.



[Making a Pearl from the Grit of Life is the first book by Sharon Rainey, Writer, Entrepreneur, Wife, Mother, and Lyme survivor. It allows us to follow Sharon Rainey on a very private path of early trauma. It leads us through depths of the human spirit – depths we come to recognize as very much like our own – and, through hard-won lessons, emerge onto a higher place of inner strength and happiness.
“If my life had been easy I would have been short-changed. Now I thank God for the challenges. They forced me to leave the path I was on – one that led deeper into disappointment – and to find the path of spirit.
“My world is not perfect. I suspect the world is not meant to be perfect. But today my life is truly like a pearl, more beautiful than I could have imagined.”  –Sharon E. Rainey]

And then there's the book I just finished reading yesterday:  This Life Is In Your Hands by Melissa Coleman.

• "This Life Is in Your Hands is the search to understand a complicated past; a true story, both tragic and redemptive, it tells of the quest to make a good life, the role of fate, and the power of forgiveness."

This book has really hit me hard.  I am pretty slow, so I'll be mentally & emotionally digesting this for a while.  Chewing on my cud, so to speak.  My initial reaction is that if you read a book that inspires you to begin farming, BEFORE you sell your house & all your belongings & pack everything into a yellow truck & begin your farm dream, READ THIS BOOK.  I will caution you that this is not a neat & tidy book that you can read to your little ones.  Unless you consider skinny-dipping, and some of the other hippie-style social interactions okay.  I won't be reading this to my kids.  But I'm glad I read it.

I am really impressed by the courage of Melissa Coleman and Sharon Rainey.  These women have endured various traumas, and not only survived, but have grown into beautiful, strong women.  They are opening up their sorrows and hardships so that you will be blessed.

I have been thinking a lot this year about the challenges of parenting.  How we as parents want to bring our children up in the nurture and admonition of our beliefs, goals, ideals & purpose.  We endeavor to encourage the shaping of their core, hopefully without destroying them.

My parents valued education, culture, material success – and pushed me hard in those directions.  My bad:  I ended up not achieving their goals for me, but living & pursuing my own. 

How much of what we are is a result of striving against our parents' goals? How much of what our children will become is a result of them doing the same? How can we nurture w/o smothering? How can we encourage without stunting?

So I am going to leave this post in its open ended work in progress form, work on my cud, and finish later.

Next book on my plate is my Dad's Pieces of History: The Life and Career of John J. Harter.

About the Author

John Harter's thirty-year diplomatic career included foreign assignments on four continents, a master's degree in economics from Harvard, a seven-year writer/interviewer stint at USIA, and representing the United States at many international meetings. After retiring from the Foreign Service, he served as oral historian at the National Gallery of Art, organized sixteen conferences on international economic issues for the American Foreign Service Association, and worked twelve years as a declassifier for USAID. He has three adult children, six grandchildren, and, as of 2011, one great-grandchild. He is currently writing his memoirs.

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: 

Luke 6:37

But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses. 

Mark 11:26 

Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.
Colossians 3:21