Teresa's Aronia Jam/Jelly Production

Teresa is bringing her wonderfully delicious, nutritious, and some say even magical Aronia Jam and Jelly up to the indoor market at Immanuel Lutheran at 616 Lake St. in Evanston, Sat., Nov. 21, 9 - 1 p.m. She will offer specials on whole cases (12 jars) so you can knock off lots of gift-giving obligations in one fell swoop, and still have some leftover for yourself.

The aronia berries in these jars started off as clusters of beautiful white flowers in Teresa's 2-acre field of organic aronia bushes this past spring. They ripened all summer, and we picked them during one hot week in late August.

Then Teresa froze about half of them and took them up to an organic processor in Honor Michigan, Food for Thought. Here's what happened next . . .

They got warmed up and dumped in a copper cauldron. Then someone turned the chopper blade 10 times to chop the fruit into small pieces.


Here's Timothy, the CEO and chef at Food for Thought, who's just finished chopping up a batch of aronia berries. The chopped fruit is then dumped into a large heated cauldron and mixed with organic sugar, lemon juice, and pectin. Here Trish, the floor supervisor, is getting ready to dump whole berries into the grinder.

The huge pot of boiling hot jam mixture is poured into a machine that squirts it into the sterilized bottles, which are then capped and cooled.

This year, Teresa made 1200 jars of jam from about 360 pounds of berries. She made another 200 jars of jelly from 9 gallons of fresh-pressed aronia juice.

Come up to Evanston and get enough to last you all winter!

Annual Tour and Potluck

Thanks to everyone who shared food and fellowship with us last Sat., Oct. 3.

It was a sparkling autumn day with a golden slant of light that made everything shimmer and glow.




Congratulations to the winners of the "Name That Vegetable" quiz, Susan Kortendick and Gale Grimmenga!


And thanks to all the hard-working children who took to cider pressing like fish to water, and made us gallons and gallons of delicious apple and pear cider.


And finally, a big thanks to all the musicians who shared their songs with us around the bonfire fueled with Henry's broken crates.

After the Deluge

These were taken Monday morning, after high water had been reached Sunday night. Within 24 hours the water was down, but the mud remained.

We'll be harvesting the few greens that were on high ground, plus some of the roots and squashes, but there will be a sparse market stand this week. Nevertheless, what's there will be excellent, so please stop by.

We trust in the resilience of Nature, and expect to be providing you with a wide variety of vegetables again within a few weeks.

How high's the water, Mama?

No time to talk about our flood . . . Besides, the pictures speak for themselves. More soon . . .