Meet the Greengage (Bears and Plums)

                                  

When we first moved here, in 2007, I knew the first thing I wanted to do was plant some fruit trees. The property had been a dairy farm before it was chopped into five acre parcels and sold off, and our parcel was the one with the original farmhouse on it, and where the dairy barn had stood before it was razed. There were few trees and a lot of bare earth. In my mind, an orchard is an indispensable part of any homestead, so I started doing some research.

Fruit trees are not as easy as people think - they are really rather finicky and delicate, for the most part, and need to be carefully chosen for the site. One needs to take into account not just the zone you are in 

(We are 8a - you can look up yours here) but also your microclimate and factors like drainage and soil composition. I have a very cold, windy microclimate and sandy, gravelly soil. Not really ideal. However I also have full sun all day long and  more than adequate rainfall.  While I was looking for information about varieties that might do well on my farm I found this amazing web site: Trees of Antiquity

Trees of Antiquity is devoted to propagating and preserving heirloom varieties of fruit and nut trees, and their experts will happily chat with you on the phone about your specific needs. They also have a terrific catalogue which arrives in the dead of winter and provides hours of entertainment in January, when I am likely to have exhausted all the interesting options on Netflix. 

After extensive consultation, I chose several trees - three varieties of apple including one cider apple (a golden russet); three cherries (Bing, Rainier, and one named Sam), three pears (really too many pears, nobody needs three pear trees but I'm glad I got the Comice, they are the best pears EVER. I forget what the other two varieties are) and two plums. One is an Italian plum, which are purple on the outside and golden on the inside and delicious. That tree bears an alternating light/heavy harvest, but always as many plums as we can eat or possibly use. 

The second plum tree I chose is a greengage plum. Greengage plums are a very old variety, believed to have originated in Iran, and first introduced to Europe by the royal gardeners of 16th century France, who named it the Reine Claude. You MAY have seen greengage plums once or twice in a particularly well-sticked grocery store, but they are not generally available because the trees are not well suited to profit driven agriculture. They take a decade or so to begin bearing, and then they only bear good crops every two or three years, with very scant or absent crops on the off years. 

My tree has a perverse tendency to bear only in years when we are spending the summer in Mexico. I have only had three good harvests off this tree (which I planted in 2008. The first was in 2016, when we first discovered the unearthly deliciousness of these plums. Their reputation as the queen of plums is well deserved. We gorged ourselves and eagerly anticipated the next harvest. In 2017 there were no plums. In 2018 we could se it would be a goof year, but alas, we were spending the entire summer in Oaxaca. 

I told a friend of mine to please harvest the plums, and she did. She texted me to thank me and said "oh by the way, there has been a bear in your orchard. I saw bear scat." Normally, I would probably pooh-pooh a pronouncement by a friend of mine that they saw bear scat, but this particular friend grew up in the Yukon, and I trust she k owe bear scat when she sees it. "don't worry about it," she said, "your goats are safe. He was here for the plums." A year or so later, while we were beating about the bushes looking for a lost turkey, we found the place where the bear must have come in. A heavy-duty galvanized cattle panel was crumpled up from the ground, bent and twisted and lifted a good three and a half feet from the ground. We hadn't noticed because it was in an area of very thick brush. As far as we know, the bear hasn't been back. 

Maybe the bear hasn't been back because the tree hasn't fruited again until this year. In late spring, I could see the tree was absolutely loaded with small fruit, and that this would be the best year yet. And once again, we were planning to be in Mexico from mid July through mid August. I lamented the fact that we would probably one again miss out, and told my friend to come on back, and watch for bears. But luckily, when we returned a few days ago, the plums were just beginning to ripen and fall. 

They are just as good as I remember. So sweet - the sweetest fruit I can think of, sweeter than peaches. They are beautiful, too, green with glowing yellow and pink blushes. There is probably no better way to use them than to just eat them out of hand until you can eat no more. But because there are so many, I need to find some other things to so with them. 

Things to do with greengage plums, after eating yourself sick:

- dehydrate them (greengages are a freestone plum, so very easy to prep and dehydrate)

- make a shrub (cover a quart or so of chopped fruit with sugar and let macerate two days in the fridge. Add apple cider vinegar to make a concentrated, sweet-and-sour fruit flavored syrup. Pour over some ice cubes and add sparkling water, with or without a jigger of spirits)

- Clafouti

- jam, as a last resort. Perusing some recipes suggests vanilla as a flavoring. However, we also got home in time for peak blackberry season, so my jam needs will be well-met. 

Small rant to end this post: The world has lost some vast and depressing percentage (I've heard everything from 30-75%) of its heirloom varieties of food plants. The wonderful diversity of food plants not only provides us with a spectrum of tastes and nutrition, but is also essential for food security. Different varieties of the same species have differing resistance to pests and diseases and different abilities to thrive in varied climates. This isn't academic - with climate change we need ALL the varieties of ALL the food plants in order to feed our hot, crowded planet. 

There are many seed houses and orchardists devoted to preserving these wonderful old heirloom varieties. 

It's worth seeking some of them out and supporting their mission. You'll eat better and sleep better :)