Two weeks in the dunes: the beach plum harvest

Beach plums don’t grow where it’s comfortable. They grow in the dunes, in sand and salt wind, and for about two weeks in September they ripen all at once. We pick by hand, early, before the sun gets high: a few of us with buckets, working the same stretch of the National Seashore our families have picked for years. The fruit is small and tart and full of pectin on its own, which is exactly why we never add any. A little cane sugar, small copper pots, and time. That’s the whole recipe, and it’s the reason the jam tastes like the place it came from.