This is a blog about plums. 
Plum is a nice-sounding word. Like ‘plump’, round and cosy without being fat. And if you say it lots of times quite fast, it sounds like a small, naughty elephant running down a mossy corridor.
I like plums. Red ones, yellow ones, big ones, small ones, sweet ones. Even sour ones. They are a happy, easy-going sort of fruit. They grow in cool wet countries (we had some random damson trees in the garden in Derby), and they grow especially well in the countryside around here. At this time of year, every time you go for a walk, you will find some smiling at you from the hedgerows and laughing heartily as they perlump onto the road in front of you.
Our plum story started quite early this year, when the scarey cherry tree on the Rough Land, that we thought would poison our llamas, turned out to be an inoffensive, and actually quite likeable plum tree.
Strange plums to be sure – the size of a large cherry, with very dark red skin, and yellow inside, ripening too late to be a cherry, and yet too early to be a plum.
However, to go back to the beginning….
Being responsible (and inexperienced) llama keepers, we made it our business to read up on all the possible hazards to llamas that the land we are using might hold. The list seemed endless.
Our initial fears about poisoning from broom pods led us into weeks of back-breaking work trying to rid our first lot of land of the broom in which it was enveloped. However, it turns out that llamas are not the least bit interested in broom, even when there is absolutely nothing else around to eat.
Then we worried about buttercups and acorns. I think we’ve seen one buttercup in our field, and there won’t be any acorns – the llamas have eaten all the oak trees!
No sign so far of any ragwort (although it’s surprising how many other yellow weeds, with daisy-like flowers and lobed leaves, hang around in the wild pretending to be the paranoia-inducing culprit).
And then we came upon the big cherry tree on the Rough Land.
Now the sight of the cherry tree filled us with mixed feelings. With the hottest part of the year on the horizon, the llamas were sorely in need of a big tree to provide a decent amount of shade from the 36 degree sun. But the thought that one mouthful of wilting cherry leaf at the end of the summer could kill a full-grown llama like (actually, very like) a cyanide pill, gave us serious cause for concern.
We decided to lop off the lowest branches which I figured were within easy llama-chomping reach (very carefully disposing of the wilting off-cuts, way away, out of llama browsing range), and postpone any serious tree-felling, until we knew whether the llamas would actually show any interest in eating the remaining bits of reachable tree. Apparently, all parts of the tree could be poisonous, but the stones, and the wilted leaves would be the deadliest.
We waited and watched. And although initially all the llamas seemed quite oblivious to it, we noticed Duc’s interest in the lowest branches growing, along with the small round fruits which were developing in profuse clusters throughout the tree.
By the end of June, Duc was up to his old standing-on-hind-legs-like-a-circus-horse tricks, and deftly removing the ripening fruits for a crunchy snack between grass-and-blackthorn meals.
I began to panic – imagining we would return the following day to find Duc an inert heap below the deadly cherry tree. Simon simply refused to accept that this could possibly be an issue, and willed the tree to just NOT BE A CHERRY TREE. He found a very red, juicy-looking little specimen and bit into it. “This is a plum”, he stated triumphantly, in that ‘I’m always right’ sort of voice he has. “But it looks like a cherry”, I countered, “It has cherry bark, and cherry leaves, and those small red things look like cherries to me”. “That may be so, my dear, but it tastes like a plum.”
And so it did. But, unable to identify the species, I figured it was probably some weird freaky plum-cherry, that would still cause serious illness if not death. And now, Duc’s antics were beginning to bring down tasty morsels for Valentine and Ana to snuffle up from the ground. For my own peace of mind we needed to act.
Which is how Simon came to be up a ladder, surrounded by greedy llamas, picking cherryplums, while I stood below holding the ladder and trying to catch the errant fruits that escaped Simon’s grasp, before vast quantities were gobbled up by the four-legged vacuum cleaners.
It is also how we managed to fill our freezer with many kilos of small, (and very hard to stone) plums for a rainy November’s day making jam, and how we discovered, in the end, that llamas do not die from eating plum stones.
And so to August….when the REAL plum harvest begins.
There is a lovely orchard just off a track in the hillside near us, that is bursting with a profusion of fruits, and which we have never yet seen tended by anyone. Which is to say that, although we see that the ground below the trees is hoed and cleared of weeds, and we see CDs hung in the branches (presumably to keep away the birds), and lately we have seen bags of garlic hung like talismanic garlands around the necks of some of the smaller trees, we have never yet, in all our six years of visiting the orchard in our walks, seen anyone there. And no one ever seems to pick the fruit – which grows beautifully, (even in the years when early weather conditions result in a poor harvest across the region of particular fruits like apricots or cherries), and which simply falls to the ground in untouched pools of abundance.
We have never taken any of this fruit because, although it seems that much, if not all of it will be simply left to rot, taking it without being able to ask someone’s permission to do so just feels plain wrong. And of course, I always feel as if someone (probably very tiny and ethereal) is watching us from the covered darkness of the wild land that surrounds the orchard. But while the fruit did not find its way into our mouths, it certainly found its way into our dreams.
So when we first thought that we would be buying 8 hectares of land, we fantasized about using an acre of it to plant an orchard of our own. We debated which fruit we would grow, and researched which varieties would grow best in this climate. We checked out the price of young trees for planting, and the price of the necessary tools to prepare the land. And when we realised we would not be getting the land after all (more details to follow….), I had a real sense of disappointment that we would have nowhere to create our own orchard, to provide the sweeter elements of our self-sufficient life-style. Tomatoes, lettuces and peppers are easy to grow in a little back-garden plot, but fruit trees need so much more space.
But now I understand what it means to let the Universe provide. We do not need to grow our own orchard because we are actually living in the middle of a very big one.
Walking down the tracks and lanes that radiate into the hills from the village, there is fruit for free wherever you look. The cherries are all finished, as are most of the apricots , but there are apples, pears, (and apples that taste like pears) figs, medlars, blackberries, elderberries, grapes (from wild, escaped vines) almonds, walnuts and plums, plums, PLUMS. The hardest thing to learn is how to walk past a wild tree, overflowing with fruit, and NOT stop to pick a few bag-loads to take home.
Last week, when we had family visitors here to assist, we netted a trawl of more than 10 kilos of big, fat, purple plums from one track-side tree. But since we already have loads ready for jam-making, these have been turned into a delicious stewed-fruit desert, frozen in meal-sized portions, to be eaten at our leisure with ice cream or creme fraiche. And there are still more out there, calling to us from the hedgerows…”Pick me. Eat me…” This all brings to mind a book I used to read my children in the late eighties (by Margaret Mahy, I think) called JAM. I am sure we could easily end up with more than enough plums to fill our bellies (and our dreams) between now and the beginning of next year’s harvest. When we can of course start all over again.
And I am also pleased to report that llamas suffer no ill effects whatsoever from plum-munching, and that Duc, having a very particular liking for for the juicy treats, can sniff one out at 20 metres. When out for a little ramble as part of his walking training, he has learnt where all the plums trees are along the various routes, and he starts scanning the ground for fallen bounty as soon as we approach the spot. I wondered whether there could be a special use for a plum-hunting llama, along the lines of those truffle-hunting pigs. I guess not. Nevertheless, it is a joy to behold him using his dextrous lips to gently pick up a full, ripe plum from the ground, squish it resolutely between his teeth and hard palate exactly as his head draws level with Simon’s, and to smugly crunch the stone to nothingness as Simon wipes the sprayed juice from his hair.
