Japanese Plum Sauce and Plum Berry Jam

My Red Japanese Plum Tree is simply amazing. 

This year it has produced:

10 quarts of picked plums for us, friends, and family to eat 

(probably more considering all of the "drive by" picking we all do)

9 jars of Plum Berry Jam

42 jars of Plum Sauce/ Syrup

First of all, obviously, the plums are delicious. They are such a treat for the whole family! 

Second, jam. That is all. Yum.

Third, Plum Sauce/ Syrup. This stuff is delightful. The baby and I had it on our yogurt this morning. I also think it would be amazing on French Toast or Crepes. We also use it on toast as kind of a thinner jam. There really isn't a "bad" way to use Plum Sauce.

I also have a Golden Japanese Plum tree. I'm excited to see what it brings this year!

My Tiny Tasty Dinosaurs

7 Heritage Chicks! They are so ridiculously cute! These guys are in a chicken tractor right now, but if I decide to be a chicken person, we'll build a coop and have a much bigger run for laying hens. 

Just to be clear: these little guys will be for eating. This is actually kind of a scary/ sad/ hard experiment for me. I feel very strongly about ethicaly raised meat, but like most people, I don't want to actually DO it. So this is me, trying to have integrity. These "trial birds" are rooster chicks, and they are for meat. In the meantime, they have a very nice, sweet little life hanging in the garden side of the yard. I move their tractor around, they get organic feed, fresh yummy water. We're only a week in, and I'm not gonna lie, it's already a little emotional for me. 

In these pictures they are a little wet, because they accidentally got spinkled. Poor boys were not happy! 

Mmmm..nom..nom..nom...

The garden is in full swing and we are geting to eat out of it every day!  

I got about 5 pounds of potatoes from my first barrel. They were fabulous and went into and amazing potato salad for my hubby. It was a far cry from 50 pounds, but I also didn't finish filling it with dirt, so who knows.

Chicken broth complete with medicinal herbs for my sick little boys. 

This is the best soup I've ever made, but let's be honest that isn't saying a lot. Then my hubby agreed, and I thought that was sweet, but he's eaten street food off a road stand in rural Africa from a guy who couldn't speak English, sooo.... yeah. But when my mom said it was the best soup she's ever had, I was pretty excited. Since I didn't use a recipie there's really no redoing it. My grandma taught me everything I know about chicken soup, so here's to you grandma! 

To end on a sweet note, Japanese Plums. We have more of these than we can eat, so I'm thinking jam! We already ate all of that yummy strawberry jam anyway.