It's summer! Check out the plums bursting off the trees in the California hills. We harvested for about half an hour, and walked away with three backpacks full of ripe plumage.
Plum bread, plum soda, plum beer, plum jam, plum chutney.... we're set for the next year and we hardly made a dent in the crop. You see, there's just not enough squirrels and birds around to eat the fruit. We shot the bears long ago, and the coyote are only mildly interested. So it's up to us, folks.
I get excited when I go on urban forages. There is a palpable sense that this could be a way of life, not just a Bay Area hobby between runs to the grocery store. My apocalyptic sensabilities get stirred up. What would life be like if all the food wasn't under lock and key? If the homeless were allowed to eat restaurant scraps? If I had to feed my family with the resources located only in this valley?
And here's a close-up of the season's first plum bread, just to point out that some things really shouldn't be photographed on macro. It was the most delicious eruption of plum vulgarity ever. A tart vortex into warm comfort. It was a gooey mess of goodness, to be completely honest.
Next up: plum soda.
3 comments:
Oh, I'm so jealous...
Oooh, I wanna harvest some plums. Where did you go? I'm in the SF Bay Area too....Your plum cake looked deliciously gross in closeup. I think I wanna make some.
hey Moonsong, we do our harvest in the Lafayette/Moraga area, but Tilden is also a great place to find wild plums. It's a little early - I ate one yesterday, tart! but in a couple weeks, it's on.
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