Sandhill Plum Season Again!

Photo credit:  Lyn Fenwick

 The 2019 sandhill plum season was terrific, and I can't remember how many jars of sandhill plums I made.  We shared them with friends across the United States.  

Unfortunately, 2020 there was a late frost and it killed the plum crop.  We had shared most of the jelly I canned, and we were down to our last jar this spring.  We had a light freeze this year, and I was afraid that there would be no plums again.  I watched carefully, and I was delighted to see that the freeze had not killed the plums.  I could hardly wait!

Then, disaster struck!  Someone sprayed along both sides of our road, where I love to pick the plums.  If you remember an earlier blog, I photographed one particular area where the plums are particularly large.  That is one of those large plums hiding in the sprayed bushes.  Obviously, even if a few of the plums survived the spraying, we could not have risked eating them.

Credit:  Lyn Fenwick  (More Sprayed bushes)

My heart was broken.  A few days later I crawled over the fence and went into the pasture to see if there were plums there.  Fortunately, there were, and although picking in the overgrown pasture is not as pleasant, at least I knew were would be plums.

Our pasture is unplowed prairie, and since we don't have cattle, the plum bushes have practically taken it over.  We keep planning to get rid of some of the bushes, but we keep putting it off.  The creatures love it, and both times I walked up to check on the ripening plums, I scared up a deer.  

For those of you hunters who read my blog, it is posted NO HUNTING.

Photo Credit:  Lyn Fenwick

My husband kindly mowed around some of the bushes so I would not have to walk through the overgrown pasture, and when we checked on the progress of the ripening, he went with me to pick.  The plums on the right (more ripe) are from that first picking, and as you can see, they are smaller.  It took a great many of them to make only 5 1/2 small sized jars, and the taste is not as sweet.  That day's picking also resulted in a special surprise for me--two ticks!  Fortunately for me, I discovered both of them while they were wandering around on me looking for a juicy place to bite!  They have now gone to wherever ticks go when they die!

With only 5 1/2 small jars, and one of those definitely going to my sister-in-law, who had shared her cherries with me, my husband offered to go by himself to pick enough plums for an least another batch.  He was the one who discovered a bush in the pasture with the nice large plums like I usually pick along the fence--the ones I thought were lost forever!

The nice big plums needed some ripening, but in a couple days I was able to mix them with some of the smaller ones already picked, to make more jelly.  We should have enough jelly to get us through the winter...and maybe even another year if frost kills the 2022 crop!  The pasture has enough plums to share, for some of you local jelly makers, but cover up well and check for ticks as soon as you get home.  And, if you neighbors do decide to come picking, please check in at the house to let us know its you driving through our yard.  

(c) Lyn Fenwick, "State Fair Jelly

Sand hill Plums Again

Webs on Sand Hill Plums

The popularity of my past sand hill plum blog posts has verified my feeling that sand hill plum jelly is as popular as it was in Isaac Werner's day!  (See "Plum Harvest," 6-14-2912; "Sand Hill Plums," 3-1-2012 in the Blog Archives.) Last year a frost damaged the sand hill plum blooms, but this year the blooms were abundant and beautiful.  I intended to take some photographs at the peak of the blooming season, but they had already begun to fade when I stopped to photograph what I spied from my car...web worms!  At least, that is what I thought they were.

I was fascinated by the webs, but I was on my way to a program in town, so I snapped several pictures and hurried along.  However, I was curious to research what the webs contained.

I found a post in the Back to the Past Archives written by Lois Guffy in 2004.  She wrote:  "We also had to fight the webworms that came early and formed a web on the branches waiting until the plums were large enough to enter."  She added:  "How sad it was, to see a thicket loaded with luscious plums and find them full of wormholes.  The worms were usually found embedded inside of the seed."

Since my photographs on this page were taken April 11, 2015 and it would be several weeks before there were plums, I wondered if Lois Guffy could be talking about the same webs I had seem.  I continued my research.

Caterpillars beginning to emerge

According to the Kansas State University website, it is the Eastern Tent Caterpillar that likes the native sandhill plum and choke-cherry.  They only produce one generation a year, depositing egg masses on the host plant to spend the winter.  The larvae emerge from the eggs in mid- to late-March and build their own 'nests', from which they emerge to eat the tender new leaves of the host plant.  Eventually they become moths that spend months laying the eggs on twigs and branches for the next spring's larvae.  While they may defoliate the bushes, they are not the culprits responsible for laying eggs in the fruit.

On April 2, 1889, Isaac Werner wrote in his journal:  "Catepillars webbing and hatching out with the advent of plum leaves ready to devour as fast as growing.  I went over my plum bushes about yard and cleaned them off."  Whether Isaac simply wanted to keep his plum bushes attractive or he, like Lois Guffy, also blamed them for damaging the fruit, he definitely didn't want them on his plants!

Life stages of the Plum curculio

The pest more likely to have spoiled Lois Guffy's plums is the Plum curculio.  The females are partial to plums, peaches, apples, pears, and other pome and stone fruits as hosts for their eggs.  They are a weevil native to Kansas and other regions east of the Rocky Mountains.  With their ugly snout and the ridges on their wings, they are a creature hard to love, and the fact that they are as wicked about destroying fruits as their appearance suggests makes it easy to find them despicable.

As long as the Tent Caterpillars only eat a few leaves, which should stop by mid-May in time for the foliage to return and keep the bushes healthy, I believe I will ignore the silky webs and hope the birds and wasps keep the caterpillars under control.

Fruit Trees on the Prairie

Sand hill plum branch

Very few trees managed to survive the frequent prairie fires that raced unstopped across the open range, but the stubborn thickets of sand hill plums managed to survive and spread, living long enough before they were overtaken by a prairie fire to produce fruit.  When the early settlers arrived to claim homesteads, they were grateful for the hard little plums from which to make jellies and to savor the taste of fresh fruit in season, despite the small amount of pulp around the hard central seed.

Once they could plant a garden, melons were added to the seasonal fruits they enjoyed, but it took a while for fruit trees to be planted and grow to the size necessary to produce fruit.  Even with his fruit trees, Isaac Werner looked forward to the seasonal plums and melons.

When I was young, my father bought a quarter-section of land just west of our farm.  The sons of the family who had lived there when my father was a boy, the Kennedy family, had not returned to the farm, and they leased the land to be farmed by Glen DeGarmo.  When Glen died, they sold the land to my father and they sold the old house to someone who moved it to a new location about a mile north and a half mile west of Pratt, off Hwy 281.  Left behind were the old trees, and among them a trio of pear trees.  Every summer, my mother and I would go there to pick the pears for pear butter.  The trees were very old, and there were fewer pears on them each summer, but there were always enough for a few jars of pear butter.

Pear Varieties

Mother stopped taking the effort to make pear butter after my brother and I were no longer at home, but one summer I was home during pear picking season and we went over to gather some pears.  There were none.  We assumed the old trees were no longer able to bear fruit, although we did check occasionally for a few years if I happened to be at the farm during the right season.

One year I was visiting at the time Mother had a farm women's club meeting, and I went with her as her guest.  I happened to be seated next to a lady who had moved into the community after I left home, and she and her husband were my parents' nearest neighbors to the north.  As we were visiting, I was enjoying getting to know one of Mother's friends, and somehow the conversation drifted to jelly making, and I spoke of the sand hill plum jelly we always made.  She was so excited to tell me about her own jelly making since moving into the community,  and she began describing the three old pear trees she had discovered at a deserted homestead from which she had made wonderful pear butter. 

As you can guess, she had found our three pear trees and had begun picking them clean every year before we got there to pick our share!  She was so embarrassed when I told her that my father owned that land and we too had enjoyed the pears.  

For many years my husband and I lived far away from the farm and were never back at the right time to pick the pears.  By the time we rescued the old farm house and I went across the section to find the old pear trees, they were dead.  Perhaps I should plant some pear trees this spring.  I believe that dear neighbor lady is still living in a nursing home, so until my own trees produce fruit, I really ought to go in search of a market that sells pear butter.  I'll bet she would enjoy it!

Next week's blog will share the story of Isaac's fruit trees. You might enjoy revisiting the following blogs from the archives:  "Isaac's Giant Melon," 9-20-2012; "Plum Harvest," 6-14-2012; and "Sand Hill Plums," 3-1-2012.