The Fourth Annual Plum Jam Giveaway

October 10, 2011 by
Good morning sparrows and starshines!
It’s my complete and utter delight to announce the fourth annual plum jam give away here at The Noisy Plume.  I can’t believe I’ve done this four years in a row now!  It’s something I look forward to every fall.  The truth of the matter is that I simply love being able to give away a little piece of my property here in Idaho.  And let’s just be bare bones honest for a moment, this is some of the best jam on the planet Earth.  I make a big deal about it, true, but whenever people have their first taste, they’re eyeballs get big as a bullfrogs and they nod their heads yes and affirm the truth of my bragging.

So. 
Without further delay,
here are the details!
________________________

Last year, we did a fantastic golden ticket contest with the plum jam, as you may recall.  We sold nearly 100 jars of the stuff over in the Etsy shop — one lucky person won a pretty little necklace with their jam purchase and it was fun and a wonderful gamble.  Sadly, packing and shipping nearly 100 jars of jam nearly killed us and while we’d have loved to do it all again, we are a bit busier than usual this fall, here at The Gables, and a simple blog giveaway will have to suffice.  Forgive us for not going above and beyond this year.

As always, I love to give you a quick run down about the plums we use in this jam.  Plume Gables boasts a beautiful little, creaky old, 104 year old farm house on an original stone foundation on a piece of property that formerly spanned the entire street.  It was originally a fruit orchard!  We are the fourth family to ever own and love this property (though the first two families were the first and second generation of the same family).  Deeded with the land is a charming set of water rights to one of the spring creeks that flows down off the mountains on the West side of the Portneuf Valley.  With this water, we irrigate all of our ancient grapevines, rose gardens and fruit trees.  It’s a romantic and historical detail about our home since when this little chunk of land was originally homesteaded, the same creek water was used to feed an entire orchard, and more.

We do not spray our fruit trees with any pesticides.  
Plums are hand picked when they turn a ripe, 
deep purple on the trees.
These beautiful gems are organic as can be,
watered with holy water from a spring that wells up out of the mountains we see from the front windows of our home, and they are filled with the nutrients that only a sun ripened fruit can hold.
We hand pit these plums with old fashioned paring knives,
quarter them and then turn them into jam with the help of a low sugar recipe.
The flavor is unbelievable,
tart and sweet.
The color is like magenta rubies,
as you can see modeled on this delicious little
fluffy, hot-from-the-oven buttermilk biscuit:
I’m giving away five jars of the stuff.  
Since I couldn’t muster the golden ticket contest this fall, I am including these jars of jam in sweet little packages that will include:
 My favorite loose leaf herbal tea.
Hand picked and bound sage bundles, beautiful for sniffing and smudging…
and a few other items that will remain a surprise!

If you’d like to enter your name in this giveaway, please leave me a comment on this post.  
Tell me anything you’d like, but I’m especially interested in hearing about how autumn makes you feel and what you love most about it — if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, tell me about the shifts you’re seeing as your world moves into summer!
If you’re shy or thin on time, just say hi.


Please leave only ONE COMMENT, if you can.
And please include your email address 
so I can contact you 
if you should win.

Everyone is welcome and
I will ship internationally.
Contest closes on Wednesday at 10PM, MST.

As always, thank you so much for being part of my world and for being some of the most incredible, kind, supportive, gracious and loving people I’ve ever brushed up against.  
Happy autumn!

Love,
The Plume

Filed Under: autumn, giveaway, plum jam, sage
October 9, 2011 by
 

 Yesterday was RW’s birthday!
Sometime last week I asked him how he’d like to spend his special day — though I don’t know why I ever ask because the answer never changes.  We spent the day over in the Little City of Rocks area of Idaho hunting chukar, nibbling on a picnic and exploring the sage laced hills and coulees there.  Hunting was a four hour hike up and across the rim rock and volcanic hoodoos of Little City of Rocks (not to be confused with City of Rocks by the folks who like to climb Idaho) at the end of which we were terribly sun beamed and wind blasted — I felt exhausted.  Farley had run at least seven more miles than we hiked and he was exhausted too.  We coasted back down onto the Snake River Plain, grabbed some delicious Italian for dinner with a friend in Twin Falls (lasagna is one of RW’s other birthday requirements — he’s like Garfield) and eventually we arrived home in Pocatello where we covered the tomatoes with blankets out in the gardens, belly flopped into hot baths and tossed ourselves into our warm bed.
It was such a splendid day.
You know, when you’re out strolling across the shifting hands of the seasons there’s an extraordinary amount of texture applied to all the senses.  Those patches of lichens that are so busily lipping at the surfaces of stones seem
twice as thick and vibrant as they did in the summer months.
The small body of water in the sea of sage glimmers like holy
sapphire!  The mountains in the distance, capped white and groaning with imperceptible
shakes and quakes, grind away at the sky and the blue holds the faint pulse of indigo crushed fine in the smooth bowl of the mortar.

It’s.
Nearly.
Too.
Much.
For.
Me.
To.
Bear.

I perish.  I die in the wonder of creation, time and time again.
I move through it like I belong in it, like a wild horse owns the rock that trims its hooves, like rivers to the seas, like the clouds so designed and destroyed by the lift of the mountains 
and the grace of the plains.  I move.  I belong.
This small body lives to leap up and over stones, scramble through thorny thickets with my heart beat glowing bright in my throat and there on the soft sides of my wrists.  Then sifting, sifting like the river water sifts the silt, claiming clarity and purity as it flows.  I am lost, divided, made whole again, raked into neat stacks by the tines of the wind and then spread out once more and drifting.

But I digress.
This was all to say, happy birthday Robert.
I loved being out on the land with you yesterday.
The wind burned my cheeks red and coaxed some tired coal in my soul into flame once more.
I hope you had a wonderful day too. 
Let’s do it again sometime.


:::POST SCRIPTUS:::
I nearly forgot!
Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow
Canadians!  I hope your lives have been
full of family, friends and blessings this weekend
and always.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/10/09/1111/

Filed Under: birthday, idaho, little city of rocks
October 6, 2011 by

We tend to 
go straight from summer 
into winter.  This is the Rocky Mountain way.  
Bundle up, snow bunnies!

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/10/06/1110/

Filed Under: winter
October 6, 2011 by
Just a quick note to say thank you all for the comments you left on the last post here.
Thank you also to everyone who popped a note in the mail for us or emailed us — there’s no way I can actually answer all of your emails but I wanted you to know that RW and I have read your notes and appreciate your kindness so very much.
Even though she’s gone, Plumbelina is still teaching us
so much about love and life.  You are too.
Thank you.
One million times over.

Warmly,
Jillian & Robert 
(Farley, Penelope, Mister Pinkerton, 
Rhubarb Ambrosia Honey Badger and The Hens)
x

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/10/06/1109/

Filed Under: Uncategorized
October 3, 2011 by
Plumbelina died.
On Friday, when we were coming back over the mountains from the cattle drive, we stopped at a creek for a while.  This lead to that and Plum was nicked by the back tire of our moving truck.  Her injuries consisted of a tiny cut on her face and a two inch gash on her foreleg (which wasn’t actually bleeding).  We hopped in the truck with her laid across my lap and made the rest of the drive down the mountain to get her to the vet.  She looked great the entire drive with her head up in the air, looking around, she even seemed to be smiling at me as I stroked her face and held her body close to mine.  When we pulled into the parking lot at the vet clinic, her breathing suddenly became labored and her eyes glazed over and rolled back.  I struggled to get out of the truck with her in my arms.  Robert took her from me and by the time we had her in the clinic on an operating table she had died.

It was so shocking.
We have been so terribly sad.
This has been another lesson in love and loss for me.
For of course, it was better to have known her, loved her and lost her than to never have known her at all.

We took her body up the mountain and blistered our hands digging a deep grave in an aspen stand for her final resting place.  Before we covered her in Rocky Mountain soil, I laid a bouquet of wildflowers on her chest.  She looked so perfect down there.  Snow white and the darkest chocolate brown — like she was sleeping.  I touched her velvet head one last time.  It was all so strange.  I remember thinking to myself that she was more mine than she was Robert’s since he had been away at work for half her life.  I remember feeling thick and stupid with loss.  

I wonder how long I’ll be this sad.  The past few days, I’ve been wandering around the house crying on and off, out in the studio I broke a hammer in half out of anger with myself and annoyance at the circumstances of her death.  I guess grief moves in waves.  One moment it has me completely submerged and the next I’m breathing sweet air and sunshine and the world around me is sparkling like diamonds.

If I feel this sad about a dog,
will I simply disappear if I lose Robert
or a best friend,
or a parent,
or a sister?

Why does the body feel so heavy 
once the spirit has departed?
Is it because we lift the dead 
with heavy hearts and lead arms?
Is the soul responsible 
for our lightness of spirit,
our lightness of being?
Where does the spirit go?
What does that place actually look like?

We, here in the land of the living, have such a tenuous grip on existence.  We hoard it. 
We tear it away from each other.
We live fully until we cease to live.
We forget to love what we have sometimes.
What we love can leave, in the blink of an eye.
When something we love dies, 
we always realize we loved it more than we knew we did.
The dead sleep, but the living live on.
We live on with the sharp memories of the dead lodged in our throats.  Over time, those memories dull and eventually we lay the bluntness of our guilt and sadness to rest and all that is left is a wide field, laced with morning dew and blooming yarrow
and a glad dog with wings on her back running like she knows how to fly.

She cannot be so dead.
She cannot be so dead 
when she flickers with such glorious motion 
here on the broad plains
of my heart.
__________________________________________
Two days before Plum died, I told Robert that I wanted to take a greater responsibility for her hunting 
training which he had almost exclusively been working on.  I wanted to master her in the field — which involves so much more than simply telling a dog where to go.  It requires understanding the lay of the land, wind directions, the habits of the bird you’re hunting and the ability to read your dog and communicate with it.  It’s an awesome partnership between human and animal.  I had this sudden realization over the summer months that consistently hunting the dogs with my fellow could be a really precious family time for Robert and I.

Two days before she died, she ate one of my Birkenstocks. 
What a crying shame.
Writing this made me laugh out loud!

These dogs are so high maintenance, so demanding of your time and effort, an extra portion of their energy and spirit gets in your 
soul.  When they go, they wreck you a little more than usual,
the quiet and calm left in their wake is disconcerting.
__________________________
On Saturday night, I was thinking about ways I could honor her.
On Sunday morning, I woke up early with Robert we took our remaining German Shorthaired Pointer sharptail grouse hunting in the Arbon Valley.  Before we cast that dog off into a field to do his work, I took his face in my hands and I told him:

Today we hunt for Plum.
We hunt for everything she was.
We hunt for the incredible bird dog she was going to be.
We hunt to give her wings, where she is.
We hunt in her memory.
We hunt for the dog who remains.
For the steadiness of Farley’s beating heart, flesh and bone.
We hunt to put a bird in your mouth, Farley.
We hunt to watch you do that thing you were born and bred to do.
We hunt for the flicker of white in tall grass, for your bright face and fleet feet in the sage.
We hunt for the joy of being on the land and being in nature.
We hunt for the holiness of putting dinner on our table.

I cried a bit for the joy on his face as we cast him off into the tall grass and sunshine.  We balanced our shotguns on our shoulders and walked out.
Our hearts felt lighter than they had in days.
 Plumbelina,
You were the very best little girl.  You were so happy, 
so exuberant, all the time.  When you were good, you were an angel.  When you were bad, you were terribly rotten.  I never touched velvet quite so soft as you.  You were crazy and I loved you.  Sleep now, best friend.  I hold you in my heart always.
Love,
Your Girl

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2011/10/03/1108/

Filed Under: german shorthaired pointers, life and death, Plumbelina
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