FOOD

DAILY STORES

Written by: Jade Miles @black_barn_farm

There's something virtuous about bottling summer fruit for a rainy day (winter stores)... There's something even more virtuous when it's foraged fruit off the side of the road. If you have the inclination theres nothing better than a spontaneous leap into the car for a ‘scrumping’ mission - the luring art of gathering your food from roadsides and empty blocks all over the country side. It smacks of seasonal connection, offers a thrill-of-the-hunt adrenalin burst and provides an abundance of beautiful food that would otherwise go to waste.  In Victoria, Scrumping season starts just after christmas with early season peaches, apricots and nectarines and picks up pace in Feb with the addition of plums,  by March there’s apples on offer too. If you get into the scrumping swing, and I can promise the lure is strong so the chance of addiction is high , you’ll eventually build a mind map of where all the best trees are and the time of year they offer you their bounty.

Be sure to cart good carrying vessels in your car at this time of year as you just never know when a laden plum tree will beckon you to pull over and pick till your arms ache and your legs are scratched from the inevitably precarious nature of the trees roadside location.
Once home with your harvest, we gorge till we can’t and then I bottle the rest.
I do loads of preserving so I keep my stone fruit process pretty simple. 

Simply halve each piece and pack tightly into sterilized jars (I use fowlers but only because I found hundreds at an old farm shed clearing sale once - you can use anything that has a sealable lid)
 Douse each jar with a few small chips of vanilla bean.
Make a light sugar syrup (enough to fill each jar to the top). I prefer less sugar so I use approx 1 cup of sugar to 1.8 litres of water - Also,  I use rapadura sugar which has a more caramel flavour that I love but it does make the water brown which some people don’t like.
Fill each jar with the liquid making sure that the fruit are all submerged)
Slap your rubber rings lids and clips (if using fowlers - or just normal lids if not) on and ...
 Let it bubble away in my pot (again I use fowlers but before I found it at a garage sale, I just used my big soup pot) with water up to the brim - but careful not to go over - for no more than 15 minutes. (Unless I get distracted and they turn to mush and have to be eaten with ice cream without haste)

Hmmmm summer in a jar!

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