yes, we have new jars, and no jars!

On this last day of May, I’m sending out the announcement for our great new 13 oz. Mason jars. I also just instagrammed the whacky odyssey of our beloved globe jars, en route (supposedly) to Bethel,  CT, where I normally pick them up from the warehouse without issue.

We are in week two, nearly three of “Where in the world are the jars today?” Rhubarb’s in; the rhubarb festival we went to this Memorial Day weekend needed a few hundred jars (filled!) thank goodness the labels for the Masons were ready and so those babies got an early launch. Record-breaking heat, in the 90’s Saturday even in the Berkshires. Summer, arrived.

 

 

 

 

 

The MIA globes meanwhile were in Hartford Friday, then sometime between then and now inexplicably crossed into New York and kept going, all the way across the Hudson to Newburgh, an hour plus southwest of me. “I can pick them up in Newburgh!” I cried to the rep this afternoon, she’s in Florida. Very nice, but no can do, they’re at a Fed Ex facility there. I just. have. to. wait.

We’re talking like 1200 jars. We’ve already processed three bushels of rhubarb the past two weeks, two more await. No jars, no jelly! #deliverysnafu #jellymakerlosesit

Otherwise, May was lovely! We finalized the new Mason jar labels. We think they look pretty awesome. The jars stack, and there are no hang tags, something anyone who has tied hundreds on can appreciate. The wider mouths accommodate decent sized spoons, better for cooks and out of the jar eaters.

However the littler (not little, they are 8 oz. after all!) globe jars while displaced in delivery are in no way being demoted!! We, and our customers, are completely attached to their simplicity and roundness. They are going nowhere. That is literally true right now but I meant it as a metaphor…they remain a les collines vessel now and evermore.

Rhubarb began coming in second week of May. This is the only fruit we make both a preserve and a jelly for, and it was only as I was talking with someone at the festival in Lenox that I remembered why. The first fruit that appears up here in the spring, I fell on it with gusto my first year. The preserve came first, but in the long lag til strawberries come in (over a month later) I craved another outlet. As soon as I saw the color of the rhubarb juice, I was hooked. It is special, fleeting and ephemeral: the only jelly I’ve made that loses color and flavor pretty quickly over time. Must be eaten young, and fresh, a little like all things spring. With this quick onset of summer heat, that delicate spring green already is a memory. But Nocci and Clarence will continue to graze (spring grass and rabbit droppings).

Here, the process of making rhubarb jelly, clockwise: the processed stalks hang in muslin bags to extract the juice; the guava pink juice; the juice is poured off, twice, to leave what I call the rhubarb roe, a green sediment, behind; the finished jelly.

This jelly is divine in jelly donuts! Or with a young goat cheese, a creamy blue, or fresh ricotta. With any nut butter. It is sweet, and tart, and pink.

What more could you want in the month of May? Except a thousand or so globe jars…. xo