Much cookery

[igenlode]

I acquired some more ground-plums (the windfall plums that one picks up from the ground; it beggars belief for me that the general public will happily strip the blackberries from alongside the path before they are properly ready, so that nobody gets to enjoy them properly, and yet is prepared to let ripe plums that fall onto that same path rot, get trodden into the ground, and otherwise go to waste, either because they don't know what they are or because they are terrified of 'dirt') and some windfall apples, and had to spend the evening cooking in order to combat the swarm of fruit-flies that were staggering around the kitchen. (The flies were already there but made a bee-line for any slightly damaged fruit!)

I ended up making a German plum cake (not terribly successful with these small wild plums, as the stones cling to the flesh and they cannot be halved -- in the end I just squeezed most of the stones out of the skins), a plum and apple crumble, and a sponge cake (unrelated), while peeling and chopping the remaining apples to put in the freezer as an emergency measure. It's just as well that I failed to pick any elderberries this year, although rather a shame...


These are the yellow plums from one of the other trees, which may be mirabelles -- but the red plums are the same size. It's because they are so small that they are able to fall from the tree without significant damage; commercial plums would split open after dropping from that height.

Comments

[erimia]

The ground-plums are pretty much the only ones I pick, because I'm not climbing these trees. :D I boil most of them in sauces and jams so the overripeness isn't a problem. No flies so far but they do attract lots of ants.

The plum harvest have been scarily abundant this year. I have only one plum tree that bears fruit systematically and it's been dropping large amounts of fruit for more than a month, even before most of it was ripe. I had to pickle the green ones because there were just so many of them, it would be a pity to see them go to waste.

[igenlode]

https://nichempire.com/long-handle-fruit-picker-pruning-tool-for-pears-peaches-apples/
The plum harvests I've done have all involved using long-handled pickers, now that putting ladders up against trees is considered far too dangerous to be tolerated -- but of course for almost all fruit trees this technique means that at least half the fruit is hopelessly out of the owner's reach, unless the tree has been actively dwarfed. It also gives you a new appreciation of just how *heavy* the human head is when not being balanced on top of the spinal column; looking constantly upwards for long periods makes your head feel very heavy to support indeed!

One year my younger brother and my father brought back a vast number of distinctly underripe plums, and we had to find ways of using them; plum barbecue sauce and chutney worked quite well with sour plums.