Wild Plums!

Two weeks ago I made a pretty wild discovery: Wild Plums! Earlier in the spring of this year, Tyler and I found this beautiful tree.

I first identified it as some variety of wild cherry, but I was wrong.

The flowers had turned into fruits by the month of May, and that was the first hint that they were not wild cherries. Cherries never grow singularly, like these fruits obviously did.

Then, months later in August, the fruits finally ripened. I picked one, and investigated it online. I tried SO hard to identify it, but finally I had to settle for it being some sort of wild cherry that I just couldn't identify. Given that (as long as it is growing on a tree) all cherries are edible, I cut it up and gave some of the fruit to Mom and Hannah to try eating. Mom said it tasted somewhat like a plum, so I looked it up. I couldn't believe it, but the images were EXACTLY the same. My fruit was, almost without a doubt, a Wild Plum!

What I hadn't realized, however, was that the plum tree was absolutely LOADED with these plums. I thought there were only one or two, but when I got a better look at it from the open side, there were hundreds! 

I found a Wild Plum Jelly Recipe, and it called for 5 pounds of Wild Plums, so that was my goal. So I started picking . . .

and picking . . .

occasionally washing . . .

and picking some more . . .

filling up the bucket . . .

more and more . . .

and more!

Finally, I got my five pounds. It took three days, but I got them all. Then, during the weekend, Mom helped me make the jelly. We began by putting all five pounds of plums into a pot with four cups of water. We then simmered them for half-an-hour . . .

until it looked about like this. As it simmered, the skins broke and the juices came out. Pretty neat looking.

We then poured the simmered plum goop into a pot through colander with four layers of cheesecloth over it. Doesn't it look delicious?

Incredibly, that beautiful pink liquid is what was coming out of the goop! We were shooting for five cups of that juice. We got nearly four, which Mom said would be enough.

Then it all went into a pot, and we added the sugar, brought it to a rolling boil, and let that go for a minute or so. Then we ladeled it into jars, Mom did all the sealing off stuff, and vwala! Wild Plum Jelly!

It was GOOD!

I'm just amazed that we can live in a place for fifteen years and STILL be making discoveries! It's amazing that all this time there's been a wild plum tree and we haven't even known it. Thanks for sprinkling surprises all over this world, Father!