Jammin'

One of the things the GRUBS do is offer to pick surplus fruit for people who don't have the time or the ability to deal with their own. That includes non-residents, the elderly or infirm, or people who are suffering under some sort of bumper crop their yard has produced. This year there's been a fair bit of the latter, and last Saturday had us out picking plums off three trees that were breaking limbs under the weight of their fruit.

We brought home about half of the harvest. The trick is now to process it before it rots, and to then distribute the processed fruit to community groups, save some for the GRUBS Harvest Festival and return some to the donors. The rest will probably end up being consumed here. So far some has ended up as juice, a fair bit has been frozen in cubes for use in smoothies, and a lot has been combined with cherries, similarly harvested and frozen in the early summer, and made into low-sugar jam using Pamona's pectin.

There's something about a row of canning jars on a window ledge that makes me feel amazingly capable, accomplished and proud. Breaking open a fresh jar and enjoying the flavour of that lovely fruit doesn't compare. It's looking at the orderly long row of jam jars that I find so satifying. Generally speaking they have to remain on the window ledge for the better part of a week before retiring to the pantry so that I can enjoy the self-satisfied feeling they give me.