Today's story comes from South Africa.
When we bought our first house I neither knew, nor really cared, that there was a very large apricot tree growing right outside the study window. It was pretty when it bloomed, and I could see that it would produce a lot of fruit, but there’s a limit to the number of apricots anybody can eat, so it didn’t interest me much. I even smiled benignly as the birds and the fruit flies helped themselves to the ripening fruit.
This happy state of affairs might never have changed had my wife not insisted on dragging me along on a visit to the supermarket, where, by an unfortunate quirk of fate, I caught sight of the price on a can of apricot jam. To say that I was thunderstruck would be putting it mildly. Lightning-struck would be more like it. I stood there, clutching the tin in nerveless fingers, while my grey cells did some fancy cartwheels and came up with the following equation: apricots = jam. Jam = money. Lots of money!
“We’ll be rich!” I cried, dragging my startled wife out of the supermarket and racing for home. “It’s money for jam!” But first I had to save my tree from those horrible, pesky, chirping, feathered thieves who were eating away at our fortune. I sprang into action, rigging up some of the most sophisticated anti-terrorist bird equipment ever seen. I had bells that rang at odd intervals, cans of water that fell over with a clatter when enough water had dripped into them from the hose hooked up on the roof and firecrackers that I threw whenever I saw a bird circling the property.
I fixed those fruit flies too, with the old farmer’s trick of hanging plastic cups of beer all over the tree. This doesn’t actually chase the gnats away; in fact it attracts them. But they spend their entire working day visiting the various cups. By the time they realise that they have spent the day in the pub, they’re too bombed to attack the fruit and have their work cut out just flying home in a straight line.
It was an odd looking tree, one way and another, with all these gadgets attached, but eventually the fruit came to fruition (so to speak) and we picked great heaps and basketfuls (or is it basketsful?) of the stuff. It was only then that I learned that you need more than fruit to make jam. I was sent out to buy several pockets (not packets!) of sugar, and reflected that you have to spend money to make money.
Next, we had to chop the fruit up. After two baskets, my wife said: “There’s no way around it. We’ll have to get a blender to do the chopping.” Oh well, you have to spend money...! As the magic machine produced more and more chopped fruit, it dawned on us that we did not have nearly enough pot capacity. Oh well.... Another trip to the store to purchase two pots, the kind that the local tribesmen used to use when cooking missionaries, which would take the entire crop in a couple of sessions. Only when they were full of fruit and sugar did we realise that the pots were much too big to fit onto our little stove. So off to the shop for several hundredweight of charcoal, and home to fire up the trusty old braai. Right.
So all the obstacles had been surmounted. Wrong!
“Into what,” asked my wife sweetly, “do you intend to put the jam?”
“Bottles, of course,” I said. I then realised that our only stock consisted entirely of empty wine bottles and I could convince no-one that this would be a novel and original way of marketing apricot jam. So off we went and bought a supply of bottles and lids at marginally above the cost of the commercial jam. But by now, economics had passed clean out of my thinking. This was survival!
Finally it was done. The tree was bare of fruit. The braai smoked no more. The sugar sacks had gone and we could walk straight into the dining room again. It was a fine sight, with bottles and bottles of jam covering every available surface in the kitchen and dining room. We studied it all with pride. We stood and looked at it and exchanged tired smiles. It had all been worth it, after all.
After two days of cooking in the caravan and eating in the lounge, we decided that some other storage for the jam was required. I went to the hardware store and invested in some stout timber from which to build a set of shelves. I admit I’m not much of a carpenter, but when the unit was eventually complete, I proudly nailed it to the kitchen wall. It stretched from above the fridge right up to the high ceiling and it looked really rugged and robust. Using a long stepladder, I packed even the highest shelf with bottles, and we stepped back to proudly admire our harvest.
I was still busy painting the “Jam for Sale” sign, when I heard an explosion from the kitchen. The six-inch nails which I had knocked into the wall were pulling slowly but surely out of the plaster, a little bit at a time, allowing just enough tilt for one bottle at a time to be set free. The bottles were sliding off and exploding as they hit the top of the fridge. As I grabbed the bottom shelf to steady the unit, the nails said, “I give up! and the whole construction toppled forward over me. The noise was incredible. It almost drowned my agonised screams, and brought people in from the street to see where the bomb had exploded.
We saved three bottles of jam. They are proudly displayed in the lounge. I have no idea what that jam tastes like, it’s far too valuable to eat!
When we bought our first house I neither knew, nor really cared, that there was a very large apricot tree growing right outside the study window. It was pretty when it bloomed, and I could see that it would produce a lot of fruit, but there’s a limit to the number of apricots anybody can eat, so it didn’t interest me much. I even smiled benignly as the birds and the fruit flies helped themselves to the ripening fruit.
This happy state of affairs might never have changed had my wife not insisted on dragging me along on a visit to the supermarket, where, by an unfortunate quirk of fate, I caught sight of the price on a can of apricot jam. To say that I was thunderstruck would be putting it mildly. Lightning-struck would be more like it. I stood there, clutching the tin in nerveless fingers, while my grey cells did some fancy cartwheels and came up with the following equation: apricots = jam. Jam = money. Lots of money!
“We’ll be rich!” I cried, dragging my startled wife out of the supermarket and racing for home. “It’s money for jam!” But first I had to save my tree from those horrible, pesky, chirping, feathered thieves who were eating away at our fortune. I sprang into action, rigging up some of the most sophisticated anti-terrorist bird equipment ever seen. I had bells that rang at odd intervals, cans of water that fell over with a clatter when enough water had dripped into them from the hose hooked up on the roof and firecrackers that I threw whenever I saw a bird circling the property.
I fixed those fruit flies too, with the old farmer’s trick of hanging plastic cups of beer all over the tree. This doesn’t actually chase the gnats away; in fact it attracts them. But they spend their entire working day visiting the various cups. By the time they realise that they have spent the day in the pub, they’re too bombed to attack the fruit and have their work cut out just flying home in a straight line.
It was an odd looking tree, one way and another, with all these gadgets attached, but eventually the fruit came to fruition (so to speak) and we picked great heaps and basketfuls (or is it basketsful?) of the stuff. It was only then that I learned that you need more than fruit to make jam. I was sent out to buy several pockets (not packets!) of sugar, and reflected that you have to spend money to make money.
Next, we had to chop the fruit up. After two baskets, my wife said: “There’s no way around it. We’ll have to get a blender to do the chopping.” Oh well, you have to spend money...! As the magic machine produced more and more chopped fruit, it dawned on us that we did not have nearly enough pot capacity. Oh well.... Another trip to the store to purchase two pots, the kind that the local tribesmen used to use when cooking missionaries, which would take the entire crop in a couple of sessions. Only when they were full of fruit and sugar did we realise that the pots were much too big to fit onto our little stove. So off to the shop for several hundredweight of charcoal, and home to fire up the trusty old braai. Right.
So all the obstacles had been surmounted. Wrong!
“Into what,” asked my wife sweetly, “do you intend to put the jam?”
“Bottles, of course,” I said. I then realised that our only stock consisted entirely of empty wine bottles and I could convince no-one that this would be a novel and original way of marketing apricot jam. So off we went and bought a supply of bottles and lids at marginally above the cost of the commercial jam. But by now, economics had passed clean out of my thinking. This was survival!
Finally it was done. The tree was bare of fruit. The braai smoked no more. The sugar sacks had gone and we could walk straight into the dining room again. It was a fine sight, with bottles and bottles of jam covering every available surface in the kitchen and dining room. We studied it all with pride. We stood and looked at it and exchanged tired smiles. It had all been worth it, after all.
After two days of cooking in the caravan and eating in the lounge, we decided that some other storage for the jam was required. I went to the hardware store and invested in some stout timber from which to build a set of shelves. I admit I’m not much of a carpenter, but when the unit was eventually complete, I proudly nailed it to the kitchen wall. It stretched from above the fridge right up to the high ceiling and it looked really rugged and robust. Using a long stepladder, I packed even the highest shelf with bottles, and we stepped back to proudly admire our harvest.
I was still busy painting the “Jam for Sale” sign, when I heard an explosion from the kitchen. The six-inch nails which I had knocked into the wall were pulling slowly but surely out of the plaster, a little bit at a time, allowing just enough tilt for one bottle at a time to be set free. The bottles were sliding off and exploding as they hit the top of the fridge. As I grabbed the bottom shelf to steady the unit, the nails said, “I give up! and the whole construction toppled forward over me. The noise was incredible. It almost drowned my agonised screams, and brought people in from the street to see where the bomb had exploded.
We saved three bottles of jam. They are proudly displayed in the lounge. I have no idea what that jam tastes like, it’s far too valuable to eat!