Our neighbors gave us plums.  All we had to do was pick them.  They were large and juicy sweet.  Once home the difficult part was deciding what to do with them.  I could have froze them, but then I am not a freeze fan.  I believe in preparedness, and if the electric goes out, for an extended period of time, unless it is winter, most will spoil before we could get it canned up.  So, we made jelly, jam, canned halves, and dried a few.

A sink full of ripe plums.

 

Diced plums for jelly.

 

One of the maidens slicing plums.

 

Mashing the plums for jelly.

 

Putting the plums in the drier. 

 

Stuffing sliced plums in the jars.

 

Putting the syrup over the plums.

 

Final product.

 

Draining for jelly.

 

Filling the jelly jars.

 

 

After making the jelly, which means straining the juice from the plum pulp, I knew I could not just throw the pulp away.  I had did a double batch, so it had been a lot to try to strain.  We heated the pulp back up, added our Natural Dutch Jell and made jam.  



 

Making the jam.

 

End product. 

 

We use Natural Dutch Jell.  It takes 1/3 of a cup to replace each box of commercial pectin blends. 

 

My tasters responds, "Let's make more, Mom."