Making Jam

One summer day, Polar, Grizzly and I worked up a long flight of locks and reached a summit pound of the Grand Union Canal at a place called Bulbourne.  Of course, when I say 'we' worked up the locks, I really mean Grizzly and Polar did, as I am a very small bear and can't do very much to help with locks, especially big locks like the ones on the Grand Union Main Line.  I can watch out for hazards and make sure Uppie isn't too close to the cill or likely to catch on the sides of the lock, and I can check that the ropes aren't getting tangled up, but I am far too little to hold the ropes, push the gates or wind the paddles up and down. 

Where we moored, there were some small trees covered in purple fruit growing beside the towpath.  They looked like giant grapes so I decided to bite one I spotted on the ground, to see what it tasted like.  Unfortunately, it had a nasty, sharp taste which made my mouth feel funny for a long time.

'Poor Sonning!' said Polar.  'You are a hasty little bear sometimes.  These fruit are damsons.  They don't taste very nice fresh but, if we cook them, we can make them into lovely jam.'

As you might remember, one of my favourite foods is rice pudding with jam.  Polar and Grizzly were very kind and often let me have this for tea, so by this stage of the journey our jam supplies were getting low.  When Grizzly and Polar decided to take a walk along the Wendover Arm of the canal, I decided to be a busy bear and pick lots of damsons, so we could make jam.  I waited until there was nobody about, climbed into one of the small trees and threw the fruit down onto the ground, before gathering it into a bear-sized bag and dragging it back to Uppie. 

When Polar got back from her walk, she helped me to wash the fruit then we put it all in a pan with some water to 'simmer'.  This means cooking something without boiling it, although this is very tricky using boat gas, which Polar explained has more energy than house gas, so gets food hotter faster.  I had to watch the pot closely to make sure the sticky fruit mixture didn't froth out and go all over the hob.  When the fruit was very soft, Polar put some sugar in, stirred it until it melted, then boiled the mixture very fiercely, making me sit a long way from the pot so I wasn't in danger of being hit by little spits of boiling jam.  As it boiled, the stones came to the top and Polar fished them out with her wooden spoon.

When Polar thought the jam had boiled long enough to set when it cooled, we lined up some clean, empty jam jars and she carefully poured some of the damson mixture into each of them, then screwed on the lids.  When the jam cooled down, it was a dark pink colour.  It was still a little too runny to put on bread or scones but it tasted delicious and was absolutely perfect for stirring into rice pudding, so I was a very happy small bear indeed.

Later on our journey, we picked crab apples, blackberries and other hedgerow fruits and made even more jam.  In fact, we had more than we needed for our journey, even with a hungry small bear to feed.  We gave some to our friends, who thought they were very lucky indeed to have special bear-made jam to enjoy for their tea.  I hope to make lots more this year, with help from Hanley Bear so, if you see us scrambling about in the hedgerows later in the year, you'll know why we're harvesting!