Cherry Plum Jam

The days are marked by the coming of autumn. Each daybreak illuminates scattered apples and leaves — pilgrims beginning the year's diaspora. A week or two ago the afternoons were heavy and lazy, but they've since developed a crisp edge. These hints from the trees and sky have flipped a switch somewhere within; I begin to feel a sense of urgency. If we don't hasten to bottle the abundance around us, it will wither, rot, and be lost to the winter.

Sixty-or-more-year-old canned goods.

So we set out on an adventure to preserve the summer's wealth.

A quest for more canning jars took us into the basement, where the larder is fully-stocked with hundreds of goods canned by my great-grandmother Amanda. Maia filled a box with jars (mostly blackberry jam from 1948) for us to wash out and refill with this year's fruit. Rather than immediately emptying them, Erik and I peered inside and looked for unspoiled treasure to sample.

1948 Blackberry Jam

Though many were moldy, we found a jar of blackberry jam with an intact seal and no sign of spoilage within. We tasted the vintage jam — though we were feeling brave, we only took a fraction of a teaspoon each.

The flavor had certainly changed over the years! The distinctive taste of fresh blackberry had waned; it was still present as an overtone, but the strongest impression I had was of raisins. The sweetness was still intact, with no hints of fermentation. Overall, it was pleasant. Erik made note of the whole berries still preserved in the jam as an insight into Amanda's canning choices. We invited Sola and Maia to try it as well, but they declined for reasons of sanity.

We composted the rest of the jar's contents, and that of the rest of the jars we'd brought up. What a loss! Amanda canned a treasure trove of local fruits and berries, vegetables and soup stocks, and our goal is to be rid of them. I can't help but feel regret as we gradually work through the jars, but my fear of botulism or other food-borne illness from such old jars is too great for me to have more than the smallest taste from the best specimens. At least I can say I've tasted my great-grandmother's jam.

Maia and Erik started this year's preservation party.

Cherry Plum Pie

We'd picked a good-sized mess of cherry plums, which they and Sola augmented with plums from our neighbor's ancient and heavily-laden tree (he gave his blessing). These plums became a number of delights: some were pitted, dried and sugared — sugarplums! Others were simply frozen. A single cherry-plum pie was baked, with fine results. Finally, a large number were pitted and put through a saucing machine, which rendered them (after some sweetening) into cherry plum jam! The jam is quite wonderful; it has a thick consistency reminiscent of apple butter, and a lovely tartness that holds the attention.

We've been saving most of our windfall apples for cider making, but some of the damaged specimens — those too good for the chickens, but not good enough to store — have been turned into apple sauce, apple butter, and dried apple slices. The only trouble with dried fruit as a storage method is that we always seem to eat it before we can put it away.

Sola and Erik canned two different kinds of blackberry jam. Erik used a method similar to the historic blackberry jam we sampled — whole berries boiled down with sugar and a bit of pectin. Sola decided to pursue a path of greater effort for more specific returns: she wanted a jam that wouldn't be full of seeds. After running the berries through the saucing machine and cleaning up the seed-filled puree from its crevices, she concocted a silky-smooth blackberry freezer jam. I'll happily eat both.

Blackberry Jams — Whole Berry on left, Freezer Jam on the right.

Apples and tomatoes harvested within a day.

Summer was late coming this year. We planted tomatoes in the ground and kept them covered in plastic cages, urging them to bide their time until the heat arrived. We plucked their blossoms and told them to keep growing, to wait for dry heat. That heat eventually showed up in late July and lingered on, no rain in sight, until this past Sunday. The tomato plants grew, dust swirled, and the grass turned a crispy golden-brown.

This Sunday the heat electrified and thunderheads glowered. Nearby lightning strikes made the power in the house blink, and Monday morning brought the forgotten sight of wet, flattened grass. We've continued to reap the summer's harvest — Walla Walla sweet onions, baskets full of Red and French fingerling potatoes, Himalaya blackberries, and an ongoing supply of chard, kale, and bok choy.

Walla Walla onions, French Fingerling potatoes, and Rainbow Chard

Apples are tumbling down as they self-thin and gradually ripen. Our apple trees have some good news, but also some bad. The older apple trees are bearing a bumper crop, particularly the Northern Spy, the Tompkins King, and the Roxbury Russet. One of the un-identified green apples is also bent heavy with apples, and we've gone out each morning to collect boxes of apples for cider making before releasing the chickens.

The bad news is that marauding deer — I suspect a pair of young bucks — have gotten into our young apple trees and have stripped some (to varying degrees) of their leaves. My only consolation is that it's late in the season and they'd soon have been shedding their leaves anyhow.

In spite of deer and chicken incursions into our plantings, we have much harvesting to look forward to. Lettuce and carrots, squashes and bok choy, sunchokes and sunflowers, kale and potatoes, Copra onions and bush beans and Neon Glow chard. And of course, bushels upon bushels of apples.

A mixed dozen of our home-grown, free-roamin' eggs.

Felix's note: In the first draft of this article, I incorrectly suggested that we might not be getting any eggs from our Golden-Laced Wyandottes. Sola informs me that this is inaccurate and libelous. I've since admired their attractively speckled brown eggs.

Our second generation of chickens have begun laying in a serious way. Egg production has crept up from a slow trickle this past winter — as few as four eggs, some days — to a steady flow. We've been averaging around two dozen per day, which has given us occasion to meet more of our neighbors as we've needed to find people to buy and use our eggs.

If the trend continues, we may get three or four dozen eggs daily by October. Some of the more skittish breeds are not yet laying reliably, or perhaps are laying their eggs in secret clutches unbeknownst to us. Only rarely do we find eggs from the Silver-Spangled Hamburgs (petite, pointy, and white). I've only recently seen any eggs at all from the Golden-Laced Wyandottes, who have some of the Hamburgs' wild streak. On the other end of the spectrum are the Araucanas (green and blue eggs) and Red Stars (rich brown eggs), who are steadfast layers.