Plumpacalypse 2017: The Final Tally

(This photo has 130 jars. We had already given away a dozen!)

It was a bumper crop year for us!!

2017 Plum Jam Final Results:

144 jars of jam (12 oz)
10 batches over 10 Days

> 240 cups of fresh plums
80 cups of sugar (40 lbs)
10 4.7 oz jars of pectin

Our last record was 97 jars.
We smashed that record with 144 jars!!

For the record:

Recipe for each batch:

24 cups of fresh plums
Boil down with 3/4 cup of water

Strain

Add 1 tbsp butter to pot of plum juice
Bring strained plum juice to a simmer
Summer for 5 minutes

Add 8 cups of sugar
Bring to a rolling boil, constantly stirring

Add 1 cup pectin (1 4.7oz jar)

Bring to a roiling boil
Boil for 1 minute, constantly stirring

Makes 12-16 12 oz jars of jam

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!

Plum Jam 2017: Batches 4 & 5

Today was a double batch day!!

Another 29 jars to add to the mix!

Plum Jam 2017 Batch 3!!

I'd say we're in full fledge Plumpacaypse now!! The nets were pretty full this afternoon after having been emptied yesterday morning. As I emptied the nets today, more plums continued to drop!

I composted about the same amount as what I used for the jam today.

I made another 14 12-oz jars today, bringing our total so far to about 40 jars.

I'm feeling pretty good about staying on top of the fallen plums so far. Hope we're able to continue.

Plumpacalypse 2017!!!

And so it begins....

We just finished making our first batch (12 jars) of Plum Jam!
We were really lucky with the weather/timing. I was afraid that Plumpacalypse 2017 would coincide with our RV Trip. In the past, it seem that I have made jam the last week of June. I think the weather has been cooler over the last couple of weeks, so lucky for us, the plums haven't really start dropping yet. We came home to enough ripe plums in the net to make our first batch today.

Just for the record, i'm putting down our recipe and some step-by-step photos below so I can remember what we did. We just tasted this first batch, and it's relish!!

24 cups of fresh fruit
1 cup of water
cook down the fruit, strain in the new pot using the mesh strainer

Add 1tbsp butter to the fruit juice
Bring the fruit juice to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes

Add 8 cups of sugar

stir constantly, bring to a rolling boil

add 1 cup of pectin (add 1/2 cup of sugar).
(This year and last year, I used the 4.7 oz jars of RealFruit Classic Pectin. One jar equals one cup.

stir constantly, bring back to a rolling boil

stir constantly, boil for 1 minute

pour jam into the 8 oz glass pyrex
use pyrex to pour into each individual jar

This batch yielded almost 12 12-oz Jam Jars


Dick, sifting through the plums, picking out the best ones for the jam


24 cups of plums


here's the set up - boiled fruit in right pot, strained fruit juice in center, compost on left


stirring the pot, waiting for it to come to a boil


stirring the hot jam!


the first batch of 12 jars


new labels!