The Plum Tree Rules

(Watch out for drunken wasps!)

We returned home on Sunday afternoon after a short break on the mainland to find the big old plum tree in the garden laden with ripe fruit and drunken wasps. Now I’m all for sharing my harvests with the local wildlife, but this was getting ridiculous – some of the plums hanging on the branches were almost completely hollow, with over a dozen wasp bums poking out as they happily munched away on the over-ripe fermenting innards of the fruit. I felt it was a good time to remind them of “The Plum Tree Rules”...

Many chickens under the plum tree!

The rules are simple:

Windfalls and anything within reach of a stretching beak belongs to the chickens. They are let through to the garden for supervised visits and do a great job of clearing up all the plums on the ground (and any unlucky wasps lurking in them!). I swear the chickens can hear the sound of a plum dropping onto the grass from fifty yards away – there’s always a rush from wherever else they are in the garden to see who gets to it first! They also do a good bit of fertilising of the soil around the base of the tree while they’re busy stuffing their feathery little faces.

Anything above human reach (including with the help of the boathook and washing line pole, both of which are essential plum harvesting tools!) belongs to the wild birds, wasps, and other insects - a thank-you to everyone who pollinated the flowers back in spring.

A Red Admiral butterfly and a wasp share a plum

Everything in between is ours, for jams and jellies, crumbles and clafoutis, for bottling and wine-making. Sometimes the dividing lines are a bit blurry, but there’s enough to go around for everyone!

Bottling some of the plum harvest

Sunday evening was spent chopping some of the 3.5kg of plums I picked that afternoon, then bottling a load of jars of them in a light syrup. Monday afternoon was spent in much the same way, after I harvested another two kilograms of them. In a few days time I’ll make a small batch of jam. I’m trying to move away from making so much jam from my fruit harvests (it just uses such a lot of sugar!) so bottling – or water-bath canning, depending on where you are in the world - has been my method of choice for preserving fruit over the last couple of years. When it’s preserved in that way it can still be used in pies and crumbles during the winter, and it is so nice to be able to enjoy a jar of summer sunshine spooned over porridge on a cold dark morning. But let’s not think about winter yet – I still have a tree full of plums to deal with! Just try not to stand on any of the drunken wasps crawling around on the ground...

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