It’s been taunting us for weeks: The Italian plum tree in the vacant lot behind my sister and brother-in-law’s house is weighed down with plums that have been turning far too slowly from green to pink and now to a dusty blue.
Last year, the abandoned tree dropped all its fruit into the blackberry brambles beneath. Pounds and pounds of fruit rotted away. The lot was recently bought, say the neighbors, so the fruit must be someone else’s property. But when we weighed the ethics of gleaning—stealing?—off someone else’s land versus our horror of waste, frugality (or rather, our appetites) won out.
The three of us have been casing the tree as if planning a bank heist, stoking our impatience by stocking up on canning equipment and cookbooks. Friends with plum trees contributed recipes: plum preserves, plum cake, plum cordial. We thought of trying to find a still to make plum brandy, but since none of us had ever distilled anything, we dropped the idea.
Last Saturday, we made our move—me on the ladder, my sister holding the basket beneath—only to find that the gorgeous plums were still a week short of ripe. “Let’s do something with the blackberries instead,” Amy suggested. So we strapped on gloves, put my nephew in the backpack carrier, and trekked around the fence to the lot. We found not only blackberries but two spindly greengage plum trees that we couldn’t see from her house. They were so ripe that juices were crystallizing on the outside of the fruit. Many split open as I pulled them from the tree.
Not bad for a backup plan.
I have no room to garden. I don’t live in farm country. As I washed and pitted our booty, I realized how much of my thinking about food is tinged by worry over our disappearing natural resources and our gluttonous pace of consumption. To simply reach up and pluck more than $100 worth of organic plums feels like wallowing in luxury. If a man were in a spiritual frame of mind, he might even feel the urge to give thanks.
With six pints of greengage-almond jam in our pantries and another 30 to 40 pounds of Italian plums on the way, we’re also feeling burdened by the imperative to do as much as we can with the harvest.
Grandma Kauffman, of course, would have rushed to conserve every last one of the plums, storing them in her root cellar to feed to her six kids during the winter. But my sister, brother-in-law, and I won’t eat all that fruit. Besides, I’m too spoiled by variety to exist on plums alone. What are we going to do with two dozen pints of plum jam, two or three jars of plum cordial, and more plum cake than our diets should permit? Cheap Christmas presents, I suppose. Pass the gratitude—and guilt—on.
