Sandhill treat is plum full of taste, memories

It is not work for the faint-hearted.

It means daring to leave asphalt in quest of sand roads, not blinking in the face of mosquitoes and chiggers nor flinching when fingers run afoul of thorny branches. It’s enduring the sun and high temperatures that cause sweat to drip.

But once you have sandhill plums within your grasp, you won’t let them go.

Visions of sandhill plum jelly will dance in your head along with biscuits slathered in the clear red liquid gold or strategically placed atop pancakes and jellyrolls or turned into sauces and wine – but we digress.

Picking is the first step. And this year is a bumper year, with no late freezes and rain in abundance.

Spencer Tomb, a retired Kansas State University botany professor in Riley County, expects his patch of plums will ripen in late August. But already plum bushes across central and western Kansas hang heavy with ripening fruit, and harvest is in full swing.

“The last three years we basically had no crop,” said Wichita Realtor Clair Moore, who owns and operates the Henderson House Inn and Retreat Center in Stafford, about an hour’s drive northwest of Wichita. He takes people who stay at his bed and breakfast on guided trips along the back roads of Stafford and Reno County in search of plum thickets. He’ll help them pick the marble-sized fruit and even teach them how to make jelly.

“I’ve put it on Facebook, and we’ve had a lot of responses from people,” Moore said. “I charge for the time to take them out and pick. But if they stay at the bed and breakfast and spend the night, I take them out for free picking.”

If people want to buy the sandhill plum juice, it’s $15 a gallon, Moore said.

“I walk them through the process and give them a recipe that we can make together,” he said.

A plum of many names

The plum’s Latin name is Prunus angustifolia .

It grows in the wild throughout the Great Plains.

In Kansas, it is known as a sandhill plum. In Oklahoma, it is better known as the Chickasaw plum, Tomb said.

“There is no doubt that Native Americans gathered and cultivated wild plums,” he said. “They ate it fresh and sun-dried.

“It is very likely that as the Great Plains was settled by humans, the wild plums were spread by the early inhabitants, and that spread continued when Europeans arrived.”

Picking sandhill plums is part of the Kansas experience. Ripe plums range in color from pale yellow to dark red. Their taste is tart and bitter close to the skin but sweetest next to the seed.

“The redder they are, the sweeter they are to eat,” said Debbie Gerard, whose company makes sandhill plum jelly.

Look for them along ridges and ditches. Those on private property are often carefully guarded by families intent on making their own sandhill plum jelly.

Moore picks his along roadsides, usually during the coolness of morning.

“We pick within a 30-mile radius of Stafford, but most of our patches are within seven to 10 miles around Stafford,” he said.

Plum popularity

Gerard and her cooking partner, Kris Sallee, have been making Sticky Spoon Jellies since 1994. Sandhill plum jelly is one of their most requested items.

The Hutchinson women sell the jelly at area farmers markets, specialty stores and online.

“It is No. 1 as far as jellies go,” said Gerard. “Most people fondly remember their childhood of having to go out and pick them.

“We have so many customers who tell us it makes them think of their mom or grandma – whoever they picked the plums with. It is an entrenched memory for a lot of Kansans.”

Once the plums have been gathered, a couple of strainings and a potato masher will eventually separate the seeds from the juice. The juice is put back on the stove and sugar is added – lots of sugar.

The jelly can take a few days to set up and then can be eaten on toast and biscuits or, if it fails to jell, can be used as syrup on ice cream, pancakes and waffles.

Tomb makes sandhill plum bounces – a combination of equal parts vodka, sugar and sandhill plums.

“It takes five weeks to make,” he said. “You shake it every day to dissolve the sugar. You don’t need to refrigerate it. Nothing will grow in that much sugar and alcohol, and it makes a plum liquor.

“The plums aren’t edible after that, but it makes a nice drink.”

This story was originally published July 27, 2014 at 7:08 PM with the headline "Sandhill treat is plum full of taste, memories."