Plum Jam 2017, Batches 7 & 8

It was another double batch jam day!

We made batches 7 & 8 today, which were each 16 jars.

Our first batch was last Saturday, July 1st. Since then, we have made a total of 115 12-oz jars of Plum Jam!! A new record (by far!) and we're still not done.

The raw plum fruit mix for the eighth batch looks a lot different than the others, so I took a photo of it (plums in the kitchen sink). 1/2 of the plums are from the tree closer to the house, which are darker. Usually, these plums ripen earlier and fall earlier (presumably from getting more sun) than the larger tree in the back. We hadn't had as many drop as early as we usually do, but this morning we had more than we had for the rest of the batches. Dick says that if we were a winery, we'd call batch eight our "Special Reserve". :)

The plums have finally stopped dropping so quickly, so we think we probably only have another batch or two. I had to order more jars online so we'll be able to make up to two more batches.

It's always a crazy time when we are inundated with all the ripe plums. We were lucky with the timing this year (that we were home, and not on our RV Trip the week before) but it kept us very busy since we had family visiting all last week. Meg and David were troopers and helped us collect and sort the plums a couple of times when the harvest was especially large!!

We probably only have another day or two to go. I'll report back in when we've reached the end of Plumpacalypse 2017!