Jamboree!

Oh my!
It's been a while - huh? And I still need to talk about Plan C.
Exciting things are happening this harvest season. We're canning for the first time!
It started with jam. Plum jam which lead to a jam-making-day with a friend making plum jam, peach jam, and peach/plum jam.
But here's the plum jamboree at home:

 

All those plums! From Hill Orchard. What to do with a million plums. A friend that we met at the orchard mentioned jam and that was all it took. I thought maybe we could dry some too if we needed to - and then Ren Man reminded me that that would be prunes and I'm not a prune type of person. There were very few left over plums and we gave those to my mom who is all about wine-making. So plum wine is in our future.

 

Washing all those plums. The recipe didn't say to skin the plums so we kept them in tact despite my skepticism. I later learned that the skin has pectin in it.

 

taking out the pits - I saved a lot of them in the refrigerator. There's a way to use them to grow your own fruit trees that involves refrigeration. I need to research that again to see what the next step is. I think they have to be refrigerated for a couple months first?

 

And then the plums are cooked until they reach a hot high temp and they need periodic stirring while they cook. No problem thanks to Ark Boy.

 

mmmm! The smell of hot sticky plum yumminess.

 

all the sterilized jars laid out ready to be filled

 

and now they are filled.

Yes, Christmas gifts we're thinking - although it will be hard to part with any of the deliciousness. I'm not a jam person AT ALL - but when Ledge Ends gave jam as a end-of-csa-gift ... I was hooked to homemade jam!

I bought The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving last year and have used it for jamming, tomato-ing, beet-ing, etc. It's awesome!
I'm sad because the canning season is almost done. Just a batch of apple butter is on the agenda. I'm excited about next year though! We'll have a tremendous garden and so canning will be necessary. Plus, our goal next year is to minimall buy anything from off our farm. Lofty, lofty goal. Doable though.