A Little Jug of Whine...Not!

Those of you who read our blog are familiar with our yard and the fruit trees that we talk about so much. Maybe we get a little excited, but it's just that, with so little effort on our part, we reap such a wonderful bounty. Yesterday, Peg and I fertilized all of our fruit and nut trees with "triple thirteen". It requires a little work, but Peg and I enjoy the sunshine, fresh air and comradery of working together, laughing and reveling in accomplishing something good. In short order we were finished with a sense of accomplishment.
  Speaking of accomplishments; the fruit of our labor, no pun intended...well, maybe...but, for instance, on a good year our Japanese aka Loquat plum trees will produce as many as a dozen or more 5-gallon buckets full of fruit.  That's much more than Peggy and I can use.  We'll use one bucketful (five gallons of fruit) for canning. These make great desserts, like cakes and pies, etc.   This is a photo of the upside down birthday cake I made for her last month.
We have a friend in town who uses these plums to make a delicious sweet wine.  He's an older guy known as "Tarzan".  He gladly takes any excess we have, which is usually 8 of these five gallon buckets full or so, to make some wine and uses the rest as gifts. He doesn't make enough to be illegal. Just enough for his own consumption, mainly. 
      A few days ago, our good friend Smokin' Sam called and told me that Tarzan was cleaning up and getting ready for his Spring wine making season and had a lil wine left over, if I wanted some.  He told me to round up a jug and he will give ya some.  Any time company is coming or I need wine he always gives me a couple fifths when I need it so that's all I was expecting.  This is what showed up.

I got a siphon hose from Sam, and pushed it all but the very end into the jug.  Then stuck my finger on the end and pulled it up.

You may want to forget I told ya this trick about how to get a siphon going, 'cause it takes away the need (and fun) to suck the wine through the hose to get the siphon started.

After filling a gallon and a couple other jugs.

The level in the jug was low enough to take out the siphon hose, and pour it through a funnel.  I should point out the steel allen wrench lashed to the the end of the hose.  This weights it down, keeping it on the bottom of the huge jug, so as to not break the suction if the tubing was to curve up and out of the liquid. 

We filled the bottles we had around the house, and still had a couple gallons left in the jug.

Well, with all that siphoning and bottling going on you know there had to be some tasting too.

That's the way it goes in a small town in Cajun country. Just when you think you can't stare one more plum in the face, thanks to good friends, there's more than one way to get plum silly.