To bottle or not to bottle?

Little did I know when I was helping my mother make and bottle raspberry jam all those years ago I would now be doing much the same if not more today. In the first few years of my marriage to DonNel we lived in a condo in south Logan. Food storage was nigh unto impossible and we did not have the resources to do anything. When we moved to our new home almost six years ago I bought what I thought was a plum tree to celebrate the event. It was not until the following spring and summer we discovered that we had inherited 5 plum trees. The joke to my graditude was that the Santa Rosa Plum I had planted was actually a mislabled Peach Tree! To add to this we have ourselves a nice sized garden with a raspberry patch. And so it began and continues today.
DonNel is a teacher so just about the time that everything becomes ripe and ready she is off at school. That leaves much of the process of bottling jams, jellies, sauces, pickling, preserving to me. One of the good things we have at our house is working area by the laundry that someone (may they be eternally blessed) had the good sense to put in a gas stove, counters, and sinks for bottling. This really helps so that our kitchen which can gat messy anyway doesn't have to deal with the very messy processes involved with bottling. If any of you have ever bottled you know exactly what I mean by this. Many people, when they find out, I know how and can do bottling are shocked. I guess that is something they don't see men doing of thier own free will and choice. The really question is why?
For me, personally, it is alot of fun. There is also the feeling of satisfaction, when I eat of give some of it away, that I made that and it is worth it. The best is the compliments that people give me that it tastes like stuff thier mom used to make. That my friends makes all the difference.
As for food storage I have only two issues of advice: 1. Only bottle things you will actually eat and 2. Experimentation needs to be done in small batches. I have made mistakes on both counts and want no one to waste alot of time and money on things that they won't eat, taste bad, and have no practical use for.