Attack of the Plums!

On Sunday a lady brought a huge bowl of tomatoes she picked from her garden to share with everybody, and I was starving after church, so I decided to go grab a bag of them for a snack before choir practice. While I was there another lady saw me and asked if I'd like to come over and pick a few plums. On Monday night, Greg and I went to their house with a couple little grocery bags, and left an hour later with a big box of sugar plums (those are small and purple like grapes) and three grocery bags full of regular purple plums and yellow plums! We actually gathered three boxes of plums--which we were strongly encouraged to take with us, but we knew we couldn't handle that many. I didn't even realize at the time just how much was in that one box alone!



The next day I went out and got some jars and canning supplies so I could get to work. I started by washing a bunch of the little sugar plums outside with the garden hose and sticking them in a big pot. (there were lots of spiders and ladybugs mixed in) Then I added 2 cups of water and started squishing them over high heat on the stove. The pot needs to boil for about 10 minutes once they're all squished. Then I strained the juice out (which is dark purple from the skins--but the fruit is actually bright yellow inside). I boiled the juice again while mixing in a packet of pectin, and 7.5 cups of sugar! (I thought that was a lot!) When that was all dissolved, I poured the mixture into the hot jars, and put them in a big stew pot with boiling water (you have to cover the jars with two inches of water). I put the lid on the pot and let it boil for a good 10 minutes, then took it off the heat and let everything cool down. Later when the water was a little cooler, I took the jars out and set them on a towel. I did this process four times in row, and ended up with 18 jars of sugar plum jelly! And I still have a fourth of the box of plums left over! I canned the normal purple plums whole in a light sugar syrup, and cut all the yellow plums in half and took out the pits. I put some of the yellows in our dehydrator, for about 6 hours....but they ended up being gross. The others we're just eating raw, and that's pretty good.

The plum people want us to come over again and pick more yellows as they ripen. I think I will be a little more careful about how many we take. I shared a couple jars of jelly with some friends, and gave a jar and bag of plums to two of our neighbors. I can't wait til we can have a big garden, and I can can a lot more things. I'm doing some work for a friend who is building their new dream home, and she offered to let me use some of her land for a garden next summer. She also loves to can, and has a pressure cooker and hot-water canner. We're planning to have a couple of big canning days next summer when we harvest the food from our gardens and turn it into food storage! Isn't that exciting? I feel like a pioneer. And the song, "The prophet said to plant a garden, so that's what we'll do!" keeps playing through my head. Hahhaha!

(Thanks to the Relief Society in Summer's ward in La Grande who inspired me with their canning activity!)