Gather Tools & Sterilize Jars

this bucket success man we got almost up to the feet on the cow on the stoney ridge farm bucket look at that this is somewhere in the neighborhood look how yummy somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 maybe 25 pounds of blackberries holy cow man i'm gonna have so many blackberries we're basing all this off of a four cup recipe in other words four cups of blackberries four cups of sugar just that simple all we're doing is cooking down blackberries to sugar or with sugar so some of the tools you're gonna need you're gonna need a strainer just like this guy right here i'm gonna need a great big pot just like this guy right here and it doesn't have to be that big if you're only doing three or four cups it's just equal parts sugar to equal parts blackberries not by weight but by volume we'll use a measuring cup fill it up to four cups i believe that's the size of my measuring cup you'll need a measuring cup yup four cups or one quart and i'm gonna say we probably have six quarts we've got a lot here you'll need a potato masher or you can just mash it with your hands or you can mash it with ladle with a spoon and we'll need a flat nosed stirring spoon and you can use a spatula whatever you want to use we want to be able to get in the bottom and rub the bottom of that pan right there okay so that we don't stick we want to get in the corners and stir that so it doesn't stick you can put a splash of lemon juice so if you want to buy one lemon and squeeze some lemon juice in there it's totally acceptable if you're gonna make jam then you're just gonna crush it up and you're gonna start cooking if you're gonna make jelly you're gonna crush it up you're gonna cook and you're gonna strain it and you can strain it with some cheesecloth this is a little roll of cheesecloth you can buy this in your little local hobby store or local big box store or we can use a strainer just like this this is going to clog pretty quick where the cheesecloth is going to let some larger particles go through maybe a few seeds maybe not if you have dietary restrictions and you can't eat the seeds then double up the cheesecloth or use a strainer just like this so first step we're going to take the berries over here and we're going to rinse them off and we're going to put them in this to drain so you guys will probably notice i've got my jars all laid out right here another thing we need to do while we're rinsing our berries is to have a pot of boiling water on the stove what we want to do is…