Plums, sugar beets and other good things

A good year for plums! This is the first year my little plum tree has really borne a lot of fruit but I think it's making up for lost time. I'm so looking forward to making plum butter!

As a matter of fact, I'm looking forward to all sorts of autumn things. Winter squash, cool nights, school buses, farm trucks wallowing along under their loads of onions and carrots and the first sugar beets.

I made sugar beet molasses one year that was fun. I wouldn't do it now with nothing but an electric stove, but at the time I used a wood burning stove so it didn't cost much at all to keep it going for hours. To do it right, you need a fire outdoors. (In case you want to know, just chunk up the sugar beet after a good scrub and cook it in water until it becomes soft, then remove it and continue cooking the liquid until it thickens. Chickens and pigs love the cooked beets.)

One thing I discovered was that grated and dried sugar beet tastes just like dry coconut - the kind you buy in plastic bags.

But back to the plums... aren't they pretty, hanging there? Every time it clouds up I pray we don't have hail!