21.1.13

Fruit season is on

Fruit season is ON which means lots of fruit to eat and lots of jam to make.

Cherry Plums


Sofia helping pick the cherry plums
 

Cherry plums are not that great to eat but they do make yummy jam (as we discovered last year) so just over two kilos when into a batch of jam, two kilos went to our friend Helen and we have a kilo in the freezer too, not sure what will become of them yet.

Sofia helping again...

There was a little mishap in between tree and pot - Sofia was helping out and managed to spill the large bowl of cherry plums on the kitchen floor. I am wondering how many cherry plums might have rolled under the fridge!

Apricots


Last year we only had five apricots from our tree - apparently this was either something to do with a late frost or too much rain at the wrong time of the growing season. This year we didn't have any late frosts and it's ages since we've had any proper rain so we had over a hundred apricots on the tree - even after Sofia's regular sampling as the fruit was ripening.

There are about ten gazillion recipes on the web and at least half of them are jam recipes. Ian adapted "the best apricot jam recipe" from Little Green Cottage, but as he says, really jam recipes are really pretty simple - chop up your fruit, add in all the sugar in the house then boil it until it's nice and sticky. The recipe used the weight of fruit before preparation, but a lot of our fruit developed brown soft spots and needed bits chopped out so the recipe needed some adjustments. So we used 2kg of chopped fruit with 1.8kg of sugar and 4 tablespoons of lemon. Ian misread the recipe and added half a litre of water but it worked out well. The quantities varied but the method was copied from the recipe above. We also added in some apricot kernels too as they are yummy.

Chopping out the bugs and gooey bits


I also made an apricot upside down cake - yum!


The apricots ripened very quickly and a lot of them went brown and mushy before we could get to them which may have been related to the heat. It was much more successful than last year but we'll try to do even better next year.

The mulberry tree

One thing we discovered last year is that the birds leave us more than enough fruit to eat, except for the cherries and mulberries. So we netted the cherries this year (possibly a bit late) and we collected a good size bowl.

The mulberry tree was pruned with netting in mind but still presented a bit more of a challenge due to its size and rough branches. This did not deter Ian and he "stitched" together a couple of large nets then weighed the bottom down with bricks after we had a few blackbird intruders. Netting has had the added benefit that it has saved the car and everything else from being covered in mulberry coloured bird poo. That is Ian's head poking out of the top middle of the tree.



There is heaps of luscious fruit, you have to go inside the net and tree canopy to get at it. I have been visiting most days to do a little hand to mouth picking - so sweet! It reminds me of my childhood when we used to pick mulberries from a family tree at Yallingup so my Grandma could make jam and mulberry tart. I have managed to stop gorging long enough to pick a little to use, but have frozen the fruit until inspiration strikes. I may have to honour Grandma's memory and make a tart.




4 comments:

  1. I think I might have to Work on finding an excuse for a visit during mulberry season!

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  2. so jealous of that mulberry tree

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    Replies
    1. If you are ever over this way in mulberry season, you should come by and try them - even better than I remember!

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