I've been keeping an eye on the plum trees in our main orchard area here at Struan Farm. The plums have been ripening and the birds poised to strike. This year they got to the early fruiting heirloom plum tree in our Old Orchard area and completely stripped the tree. Apparently due to the "mast" year last year in NZ's native bush, bird numbers are up considerably. And they're behaving badly.
Birds have been going after any tomatoes starting to ripen, so we've invested in some re-usable netting to thwart their efforts. I am also going to net the Luisa plums and our Golden Queen peach tree before it's too late. But that's another story.
Once the plums in the orchard at our house looked ripe enough to pick I went for it. They come off easily when touched when this is the case, at which point they will ripen further off the tree. I only managed to get two plums off the tree the kererus (native wood pigeons) nibbled this spring and about five off another, but quite a few from my favourite. It's either Satsuma or Black Doris. My record keeping on the plum varieties planted in our orchard was messed up by tree felling required for power lines to our house, an effort that totalled several plums we'd planted on the house site years earlier. One learns to be philosophical about these things and one tries one's best when one can.
Given all the plums I've been picking around Piopio of late for the community stand, I was happy to read that in Victorian Flower Language plums are a symbol of "promises kept." Now we have ours.
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