The 'old-fashioned' way of skimming milk is just to take a soup ladle and carefully dip it off the top of the milk until you have it all scooped off. If you have a good 3-4 inches of cream it takes several scoops. The dairy is going to leave the cream on? wow, I thought most took it off nowadays.
There must be an easier way by now,
. Maybe if you google skimming raw milk it will tell you. I have never liked milk either, I just can't drink it.
Have you thought about using sweetner for your jam? There are a couple of natural choices, and though it's kinda high too, I would think it takes a lot less amount of sweetner than sugar. I use the generic equivelent of Truvia to sweeten, I can't use sugar. Another natural sweetner is Sucanat...but it's brown, so that may look funny.
Have you tried looking for recipes that are "all-fruit"? Like the stuff you buy in a jar that is just all thickened fruit with a little sweet added (of some kind- (sugar or sweetner)- just enough to keep the fruit from being too tart? Sugar is so damaging to the health of the body, and people have gotten to used to eating way too much of it.....it's hidden in a lot of the foods we buy. I have to eat as close to natural as possible, so I hardly ever eat sugar or processed foods.
I make a "jam" as I want it by cooking the fruit I want with a little water and cornstarch, when it thickens I take it off the heat and stir in a packet or two of the sweetner and eat it fresh on my biscuits, pancakes or whatever. I use it in oatmeal too. It keeps a few days in the fridge. This is sort of a simple form of jam, and I know for a family you can't do it or can it, I just think there must be a way to do something like this that isn't full of sugar. It's a shame to work so hard on something and not be able to eat it!
A mixer! Genius! (Why we never thought of it --I don't know!)