Making Plum Jelly

When I was nine years old I was watching my mother can vegetables. I asked my mother if I could help. She said it was too dangerous because she was using a pressure cooker. I asked if there was anything I could can that didn’t need a pressure cooker. She said yes, jelly did not need to be canned in a pressure cooker. She was busy and went to her work and didn’t tell me anything else. I had watched her go to the garden and pick vegetables, put them in jars, add water and put them in the canner for awhile then they were done. I figured I could make jelly pretty simple too.
I got a big dishpan and went to the timber and picked a lot of plums. A whole big bunch of plums. I ate some and they were so good, I just knew that they would make yummy jelly.
I brought the plums to my mother. She had a look on her face like she would like to strangle me. She was so busy. But she said, ‘Ok, you have to do what I tell you, or you can’t make jelly” I agreed. First you have to wash all the plums and check for bugs and bad spots. I knew there were no bugs, because I hated bugs. I did what she asked. Then she said I had to take a knife and take all the pits out of them. That took a really long time because she wouldn’t let me use a sharp knife. Then the plums had to be put on the stove and cooked with some water on a slow heat until the skins became loose from the fruit. She did that for me. I had to stay in the kitchen though and watch that they didn’t scorch. Once I started this, she wouldn’t let me go play and have her finish the project.
Then the cooked plums had to be put through a sieve. The colander had a heavy wooden thing that I had to use to force the cooked plums through the holes. That was so much work, I didn’t think I was ever going to get through. My mother talked me through it, but she did none of the work. Then she gave me cheesecloth to put in the colander to strain any little bit of pulp from the liquid. She said the liquid had to be so clear you could see through it. I strained and strained and finally she gave the ok to start making jelly.
Mother measured the amount of liquid and the amount of sugar that it needed, then the cooking process was started all over again for the juice.
While the juice was cooking she informed me that I had to wash pint canning jars. When I was done washing and rinsing them in really hot water, then she showed me how to put the rings and lids in pans to cook so that when the jelly was done I could put it in the jars and put the lids and rings on to seal them.
When I was done washing jars, mother said “You had better pay attention, this jelly is starting to simmer and we don’t want it to scorch or get too thick.” She showed me how to use a cup with cold water in it and to put a silver spoon in the hot jelly to see if it was coating the spoon. If it coated the spoon I could drop some of the jelly in the cold water to test it to see if it was just right. When that was done then she showed me how to use the funnel to pour the hot jelly into the jars, and how to clean the jars so they would seal.
I was done making jelly just as she was finishing up supper. I was exhausted. I had made about fifty pints of plum jelly. It was delicious, however, I never asked to do that again, even though my dad praised me for the hard work.