Visions of Plums Dancing in my Head

Recently, Jo and Steve invited me to join them for a lovely Sunday supper. After a slow roasted leg of lamb, crispy potatoes and lots of local wine, we sat back and filled the night with conversation.

One topic was plum picking. Jo and Steve had gotten plums a couple of years back for free from a local farmer. He had a small grove but not enough time to pick them himself as they ripen at about the same time as the grapes for wine. The field wasn't big enough to warrant paying for pickers and so most just went back into the soil after falling from the trees.

Feeling badly about this and being year-round residents who want to give back to the local community, Jo and Stever volunteered to pick the plums this year in exchange for several flats for jam making.

Feeling perhaps a bit too expansive after the dinner and wine, I chimed in that I'd come and help too and challenged Steve's sister, visiting from England, to come along as well--not something she'd been planning on doing. The local wine must have had the same affect on her reason and so she agreed to join the "fun." Ian, the other dinner guest and another year-round resident, had already been pressed into service and so we all agreed to head out the next afternoon.

Despite my comments about the end of summer, it's seems to be making a comeback, at least during the day, and so I slathered on sun screen before we headed out in the bright, mid-80s heat of the day.

Two and half hours later, sweaty, tired, and very dirty, we'd picked about 500 kilos of plums. That's 2.2 pounds to every kilo, totaling over half a ton of plums. All of which needed to be graded by size. We'd told the owners that we'd pick and that they should grade as they knew what we were doing. With five of us picking, they couldn't keep up so helped them sort before leaving the field and heading back for aperatifs. We sampled several home-made variations of hooch--one elderflower, one slighly fizzy, and one that reminded us all of Christmas with a taste of cinnamon and orange.

The best part was that they were so grinning with gratitude at the end of the day. With just three people and a small farm, there was obviously more work than time and not a great deal of money for all the labor. The husband had spent all afternoon repairing his grape pickning machine for the imminent wine harvest, while his wife and son worked in the field with us. The plum crop would go to a wholesaler and now they had the prospect of more euros in their pockets than budgeted. We walked away with four heaping flats of plums and some new friends. England and America walked away with a better image in this part of the world and everybody came out the better for an afternoon of work.

Roberto came the dinner rescue again that night with his pizza van and I fell into bed early on to dream of plums, sunshine, and beaming French faces.