The hundred and twentyfirst week of the pandemic

The last week was pretty uneventful, so this post is not going to be too long. Most days we spent hiding from the heatwave, with the exception of last Thursday, when we had the Morello cherry harvest, followed by jam making.

Garden collage from the last 3 months

I estimated, when we went to BP on the previous Friday, that by the time we got back to Bér, 5 days later, the cherries would be ready to harvest. I was really excited about the prospect, because until last year, we had no cherries for in the previous 2 or 3 years, while last year's crop was spolied by using out of date pectin sugar, causing a dificulty of setting. The last really good harvest was about 6 or 7 years ago, when Ros and Ian was with us.

Muggins up the ladder

This year all the little trees had some fruit on, but none of them had anything sufficient for making jam. So, we had to forego eating it off the tree, so when put them all together, the cherries should make about 10 little jars of cherry jam.

Here comes the help

I did all the ladder work, as I don't like Roy up ladders any more, and he secured the bottom of the ladder, hopefully better than when we were chopping up the pear tree a few weeks ago. Some fruit on the very top of the tree was left there, as we couldn't get to it. Unfortunately, not only did the trees have a poor show of fruit, but this year's drought made both the birds and especially the ants, eat quite a lot of the fruit before we got to it. I have never seen ants marching up and down trees before, but if global warming carries on causing a drought every year, that is, unfortunately, the shape of things to come.

2022's entire cherry crop

Once we picked what we could, I sat down to get the stones out, and then Roy and I together made the jam. We managed to remember to buy pectin sugar, as well as separate sachets of pectin, so that the danger of last year, didn't threaten this year's efforts.

Looks happy, doesn't he ?

The jam filled 12 small jars, some about the size of jam jars that you can buy in shops, the rest even smaller. We keep most jars we buy, so we had no shortage of them. I applied the test of putting a small plate into the freezer and then taking it out and drop a bit of jam on it to see if it would set. It did and we happily filled our little jars.

Squeezing the stones out

The next step was the "dunst", which is an ancient custom of forcing the hot jam to cool down slowly, thus creating the vaccuum ensuring that it will not go off. We use a thick old blanket, line the inside of an ice box with it, and put the jars to cool down in there. This old system really works, as a few large jars of over 10 year old plum jam, that we have recently discovered, proves. That jam tastes gorgeous and you wouldn't believe it that it is over 10 years old. There was no label on it, but it is exactly 10 years ago that we started gathering all our plums to make pálinka out of them, so that jam had to be made more than 10 years ago.

The cherries + sugar filled our biggest saucepan

Other news: I finished Vivien Leigh's biography and am now reading old copies of bound Tájoló magazines, that bring back my Hungarian orienteering experiences as nice memories. I wrote articles for this magazine, which are a joy to read again, as well as could look up my results from as far back as 2003. Thankfully, I am no longer upset about having had to give up orienteering and reading  these is a pleasant pastime.

Filling the jars with Roy's special funnel

The heatwave is still raging. We have been promised some rain and a cool down, first of which was true, but we are still waiting for the second. Unfortunately, the rain comes in sudden downpours, which doesn't help the garden much. The ground is like concrete and the rain is running off it, rather than soaking in. We had to start watering the plum trees, something we have never done before, otherwise the entire plum  crop will either shrivel up and drop prematurely, as it's already dropping pale green and unripe, due to lack of moisture.

The end result

 

The only other main event, if you can call it that, is that I decided that we should go away for a day or two for my birthday. So, I booked a B&B in Nyíregyháza, for the night of 12th July, which is next week. We have been in that part of the country a few years back, but I thought that would be nice, as there are plenty of geocaches outstanding there, and it isn't too far to drive either.

Nyíregyháza with the outstanding caches

The last bit of news is that we still haven't tried to make lángos, using Márti's recipe. Main reason being, that, as we frequently do, we overshopped food last week and have things we have to eat first, before they go off. 

Cute highland cattle from the net

Miniature Scotsman in gear

 

That's it. Nothing else had happened and I think I am having a nap this afternoon, like Roy does. Taraaaaa, next post hopefully after we got back from Nyíregyháza.

 

PS: Both these photos at the end are from my FB group called I Love My Scotland. They are both cute and cheer me up when I need cheering up. I thought I would share them with you, in case it does the same to you. 💗