I made plum jam today - 10 pints - from plums I bought at the farmer's market. They may turn out a little runny, but I believe they'll stay on a biscuit long enough to eat it. ;)
Canning makes me think about my mother and her friend Evelyn, both of whom used to can anything they could get their hands on. Tomatoes. Cucumbers. Beans. Fruit. If either of them had a pressure canner, I never saw it. They water-bathed everything.
Most of the fruit we canned was in the form of jelly or preserves, and mostly it was fruit that we foraged. Evelyn knew where there were good blackberry vines growing in a field, and we'd suit up in long-sleeved shirts, grab hoes (for snakes, and for moving vines to get at the center of the clump) and pickin' buckets, and go after them. Chiggers would eat us up, but we did it. Mother and Evelyn would split the berries between them and take them to their separate houses to process. Afterward, they'd call one another to see how the canning turned out.
"I got seven pints."
"I got six and a sample."
My great-aunt Willie had fig trees in her front yard. She never did anything with them, except maybe eat a few. She'd call us when the figs were ripe, and we'd go over and pick them and make fig preserves, which we would share with her. The thing I remember about picking figs is that it's an itchy job, worse than picking okra.
I picked my first ripe tomatoes today. I took one to Nanny's kitchen, washed it, sliced it in half, salted it, and ate it, standing right there at her sink. It tasted divine.
We picked a few more cucumbers, and left a few to grow bigger. Nanny took them to use for relish.
The squash vines are loaded with blooms, and there are a couple of little squash that will be ready in a day or two.
The ornery butterbeans are blooming; the green beans are not.
Okra is about 2" tall. I planted it thick and went back and chopped down what I didn't want. It seems I did my chopping too early - seeds keep sprouting
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