Master gardener Birthe Miller reaps what she sows and then luckily shares it with the rest of us.
Jams, jellies, butters, spreads and marmalade jars are stacked row on row and you can see it for yourself if you happen to be at a craft fair in Prince George over the next few weeks.
There’s black currant and red currant jam, strawberry, haskap, strawberry rhubarb, blackberry and cherry. Miller also creates more unusual fare like pear amaretto jam, cinnamon pear, banana pineapple, rhubarb ginger orange jams and believe it or not raspberry and hot pepper jelly, to name a few.
Miller has had her garden for about 40 years so the majority of the ingredients she uses she’s harvested out of her own garden and the pears are from her niece’s yard.
“I use as much as I can of what I grow and then when the trucks come from the Okanagan I buy from them,” Miller said, a longtime member of the David Douglas Botanical Society.
This year she’s put up about 100 cases of 12 jars.
Because it was too hot to do anything at harvest time, Miller froze a lot of her fruit and then during the last month or so she canned it all.
And what keeps her going?
“Well, I’ve got a garden,” Miller laughed.
