This self starter had several branches which arched beautifully over the dog run and which, on good years, gave us an abundance of lovely small plums. Darwin was quite fond of the ones that fell on the ground. They were a bit tart for fresh eating for me but there is something magical about fruit that's free, just there for the taking.
I dug around the hard drive & found some old photos of the fruit & jam making.
summer 2009
We picked many buckets worth and made several huge batches of jam, which turned out to be one of the best jams I've ever tasted. The jam was a total pain in the ass to make. The pips were almost impossible to remove and had to be cut out with a sharp knife. For a subsequent batch I followed the instructions of one of the old British recipe sites which said to just boil with the pips and that they'd eventually float up and you could skim them off with a slotted spoon.
Not mine! Amelia and I had to strain the entire mixture in small batches, pressing and rubbing with a spoon against the wire of the metal sieve to rub off the flesh and get the pips out. They were small and camouflaged and I know we didn't get them all because occasionally a person would bite down into the jam and get a small hard surprise.
summer 2009
This is the last of the jam. Yes, it's from 2009, & yes, it's still fine to eat. The original jam was more rose colored and pretty; it's darkened as it's aged.
But OH the flavour of the jam. It is summer in a jar. It is the perfect mix of tart and sweet, the heady fragrance of sunshine and gentle warm breeze and birds chirping.
I'll miss those plums and the jam.
And so I'm on the lookout for plums of my own, for a tree to plant on our side of the property line. Do you have a plum tree you'd like to recommend?
1 comment:
Hmmm, those plums look similar to ones that I got from a neighbour. I waited until they were really ripe, softer than I would like them for eating out of hand. I cooked them up, and I think most of the pits floated to the top. It really was a very liquidy, watery mass, and I just poured it all through a sieve and made plum jelly. Really nice:)
I think the trick was to wait until the plums were quite soft.
We do have a variety of plum trees, but can't really recommend any. I think some of those old, kind of wild ones are quite often the best.
We had a take out a plum tree that had small round prune plums, as it was riddled with black knot. We have a greengage that isn't very healthy, and another that looks like a very large prune plum that isn't in the best of shape either. Have a few more new one's planted, but no fruit off them yet.
Plum jam is nice though, but a lot of people don't even consider it.
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