plums

When we bought our house they told us we had several fruit trees in our backyard.  Until the trees started blooming we had no idea what kind of fruit trees there were.  Turns out we have two plum trees and an apple tree.  This weekend we harvested plums from one of the trees.  There were several hundred ripe plums, like more than we could ever eat or giveaway before they spoil.  We ended up having to pick them all (or at least all those we could reach from the ladder) because they were getting so ripe they were falling off the tree and the dogs were stepping on them and dragging the purple juice into the house.

I really didn't want the fruit to spoil so I decided to become domesticated for a day and make plum jam.  It was much easier than I thought and is nearly impossible to screw up.  My kind of cooking!  I poured the jam into quart jars that I purchased at the grocery store and will give them out to neighbors during the holidays.  I also used sugar-free pectin which is supposed to give the jam a shelf-life of at least 12 months.

 

It was a lot of fun.  Maybe with the thousands of apples that are growing on my tree I will try my hand at apple butter or maybe even a few apple pies!

TIP: if you frequent estate sales or garage sales you can find old canning jars for pennies which would add a bit of spunk to your gift.  I planned this at the last minute so I had to stick to grocery store glass jars.  Sadly, I was at an estate sale on Friday and there were probably 25 unique, old Kerr jars (both blue and clear) for something like $5!!  Now I am going to stock up for next years crop.