07 September 2014

Encore des prunes !

More plums! I kept watching the plum trees out on the edge of the vineyard. I even tasted a plum or two. They kept getting riper and riper. I halfway expected somebody to come pick them one day. Nobody did.





Finally, I couldn't stand it any more. I hated to see such beautiful sweet fruit go to waste. I went out a couple of mornings ago and picked all I could reach. It wasn't easy, because the area under the tree is waist-high in tall grasses and a méchant blackberry bramble. I got a big scratch on my shin. I also got 2.25 kilos of pretty plums (after pitting). Adding 1.8 kilos of sugar, that made us four more jars of confiture de prunes — bigger jars this time.

P.S. The recipe for the confiture is here.

12 comments:

  1. Ken, I think one could call this a "fruit" year!!
    And to save your shins you could buy an extendable fruit picker....
    Lidl do one in season at an extortionate 6€...
    we have one...
    works a treat...
    and is also good, the other way around, for mashing bramble and nettles...
    to a level that you can stand on them!!

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    1. Tim, we have one of those fruit pickers. I just didn't take it out with me. Anyway, 2 kilos was a gracious plenty.

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  2. Replies
    1. I had only two jars of the first batch left, so I thought I'd better make some more.

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  3. Ah, plums, glorious plums! Lucky you!

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    1. These big rose-tinged yellow plums are especially delicious.

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  4. The plums from your out back were the best I ever tasted. You will be glad you made the effort to harvest and jelly them.

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    1. Hi E., can you believe that was 5 years ago already? I remember what good times we all had in in 2009 in Paris and the Cantal, and then in 2011 in Le Perche and here in the loire Valley...

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    2. I remember your good times in the Cantal, too *LOL*. I saved some of your photos (of the gîte, and of the cows and the cheese and the scenery), and even use them in my classes :)

      As always, these fresh fruit or veg items you show are so appetizing. That confiture must be out of this world.

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  5. We see so many overgrown little orchards out in the countryside, often full of wonderful looking fruit. French inheritance laws have something to do with it - there's an orchard in the middle of a ploughed field on the way to Preuilly. Somebody inherited that bit and he's keeping it come hell or high water. There's a damson tree in the hedge just up the road fromus only 50 metres from a farmhouse, and the damsons end up scattered over the road. In England those roadside fruit would be anybody's who cared to pick them up, I don't know about in France. I guess we just have to ask at the farm if they would mind if we picked some of their damsons....

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  6. Ginny, I'm sitting here right now eating toast with plum jam and having a cup of tea. The plum jam is almost as good as I remember your apricot jam being all those years ago.

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