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.
Ken, I think one could call this a "fruit" year!!
ReplyDeleteAnd 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!!
Tim, we have one of those fruit pickers. I just didn't take it out with me. Anyway, 2 kilos was a gracious plenty.
DeleteI can already taste them!
ReplyDeleteI had only two jars of the first batch left, so I thought I'd better make some more.
DeleteAh, plums, glorious plums! Lucky you!
ReplyDeleteThese big rose-tinged yellow plums are especially delicious.
DeleteThe plums from your out back were the best I ever tasted. You will be glad you made the effort to harvest and jelly them.
ReplyDeleteHi 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...
DeleteI 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 :)
DeleteAs always, these fresh fruit or veg items you show are so appetizing. That confiture must be out of this world.
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....
ReplyDeleteYum!
ReplyDeleteGinny, 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.
ReplyDelete