The stone wall of the old barn soaks up the afternoon sun, storing heat for the rhubarb patch that grows the full width of the barn. The rhubarb gets an early start in the spring. We fertilize the rhubarb early and keep it watered, so by the end of April we enjoy the first good taste of home-grown produce after a long winter of store-bought greens.

We cook the rhubarb by cutting stalks into one-inch pieces and boiling them in water. We barely cover the stalks with water because rhubarb stalks themselves contain a great deal of water. Then we add 1/2 to 3/4 cup of sugar for each pound of rhubarb. The sliced stalks boil until soft.

We like eating rhubarb as a sauce with a meal or as desert. We also bake rhubarb in a 9 x 13 glass pan with a crust of oatmeal and cinnamon to make rhubarb crisp. But one of the best ways to enjoy rhubarb is make Gram Jam.

Gram Jam is an old family favorite. Grandma Mary cooks up a big pot of rhubarb and when it comes to a boil, adds strawberry jello to turn the rhubarb into strawberry jam. Then she cans the strawberry jam in pint fruit jars to give to family members. It tastes just like strawberry jam, only better. Everybody in the family calls it Gram Jam.

Grandma Mary learned the recipe from Grandpa Dave’s mother, Grandma Van, who learned the recipe from her mother, Grandma Gribbell, back in the 1940s. Gram Jam is just as popular today in our family as it was 70 years ago. We freeze a lot of rhubarb in the summer so we have plenty of rhubarb to cook up as Gram Jam in the winter. We love that rhubarb patch at the end of the old barn!