Plum-o-rama

4.3kg of plums - jam anyone?

We have three plum trees in the orchard and they have been getting heavier and heavier with fruit. We've had a few plums - varying from puckeringly tart to sweet and juicy - but today the season really began. A mere 7kg.... mostly Black Doris, with a few, um, others (my plum variety knowledge is seriously limited). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The Black Doris tree isn't hugely loaded with plums but the other two are looking rather bountiful.

We took Peter Gabriel's advice and adopted the "Shaking the Tree" method of picking plums - next time a hard hat might be a good idea too. Managed to shake a few directly into the basket and bags though!

So today is plum jam day, and maybe plum sauce day if I can find an ok sounding recipe. Wondering if I should try and dehydrate some to make prunes as well....

We've also just been trying to horse proof the water pipes in the paddock at the end of the race. The water pipes run along the fence line and there is a row of trees about a metre in from the fence - the perfect spot for a horse to stand in the shade. And stand on the water pipes and pull the connectors apart and empty the tank. For the second time. Just as well there is a bore to pump water up to the tank, would not be impressed if we had to buy a second tank in a month because of a pony deciding to loiter with intent around the water pipes.

So it's now taped off, the bore pump is going and hopefully we won't lose any more water this summer. It is incredibly dry around here, no real rain for a couple of weeks and it's been hot - perfect hay making weather, ironically, since this is the first year in about 6 years we haven't done hay. Do not miss it at all! Rain is forecast for Monday, fingers crossed they are right for once - the ground is like concrete.