Relative Something

We hadn’t put much focus on the wild plum trees growing on our property until last year when the yield of fruit was so high we couldn’t help but gather bowls full for making jam. This year the yield looks as good or better. Maybe that’s because we are more focused on it now.

It seems like the plums turned red really fast and the trees near our trails started dropping fruit over a week ago.

Cyndie has demonstrated great interest in gathering this year’s crop so we have been making frequent visits to shake trees and bag what comes loose.

Some of the plums look pretty big but after biting into one, I quickly discovered the pit takes up about half the size.

When making jam out of wild plums, removing pits ends up being the majority of the work.

The few that I ate while collecting the best-looking specimens weren’t as sweet as what I remember from last year, but they weren’t sour or bitter either, so they should still make for good jam.

Collecting plums provided a nice diversion from another project I was toiling away at for a second day in a row. In addition to spending an hour a day trimming portions of fence line, I started digging a trench in search of the AC power lines feeding the barn.

We still need to fix the break in one phase line that was discovered last winter. I suspect there is a failure at the point where the wires were reattached back in 2013 after they were accidentally cut by a skid-steer tractor. We have been reviewing photos from that time to determine roughly where the broken cable is routed but it is still a bit of a guessing game. We don’t have the luxury of a device to precisely locate buried cable.

I’m also not sure about how deeply the cable is buried. I wish I had paid more attention to what was going on when they fixed it over ten years ago.

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