a yearly summer tradition | strawberry picking & homemade jam

Somehow, I’ve always associated strawberries with summer. When I was a child, we used to grow our own strawberries in the garden. We had entire rows of them growing in the soil, and they would give us fruit throughout the summer. I still remember how excited I was when I noticed the first ones ripening. I rushed to eat them without being discovered. Back then, strawberries were very much a seasonal fruit. We could only find them fresh during the summer months, rather than throughout the year as we can today. And that’s why they felt so special. So we would harvest them while they were in season and turn them into delicious jam, giving us a little taste of summer to enjoy during the colder months. I make jams from different fruits, but having grown up making them myself, store-bought versions have never quite satisfied me. Yes, it takes some time and effort, but the difference in taste is incomparable. And yet, strawberry jam remains my absolute favourite. Perhaps because I never realised growing up, just how deeply it would become tied to those early childhood memories of mine. You might notice the jam is a slightly different colour towards the end. The next day, I realised it had set a little too thick for my liking, so I cooked some more strawberries and mixed them into the batch before filling the jars again. That’s also why there are more jars as well. Sometimes these things just happen and we have to readjust. #strawberrypicking #homemadejam #summernostalgia #seasonalliving #visualstorytelling #cinematicvideo #silentvlogs #englishcountryside