Coombe in bloom

On a sunny morning in April, Coombe – a tiny village on a tidal creek between Falmouth and Truro – has to be one of the loveliest spots in Cornwall. Which is saying something.

Oak woods grow right down to the creek’s edge, where a traditional brown-sailed working boat is moored – the sort still used to dredge wild oysters in the Carrick Roads. It’s unbelievably quiet, but there’s a wonderful feeling of fresh life unfurling.

The only figure in view when I arrive on the foreshore is my design partner, Krystal, taking pictures with a seriously professional-looking camera. It’s our first meeting, and it seems propitious.

We’re here to find out about our flavour, Kea plums, which grow around here in large numbers (it’s only a couple of minutes from the village of Kea that gives them their name). Deborah and Michael Richards of Crellow make some sensationally good jellies and chutneys from them, as well as Kea Plum Cheese (resembling cheese only in its texture, though its intense, slightly tart flavour goes very well with a slice of Yarg). And Deborah’s kindly given us an introduction to friends who grow these remarkable fruit in the orchards next to their home in the village.

Of course, at this time of year there’s not a plum to be seen. But it’s a great time to visit, as the orchards are in full bloom, with carpets of primroses spreading out beneath the white blossom. And our hosts, Nigel and Rosemary Baker, could not be more welcoming or more generous with their knowledge.

Kea plums run very much in Nigel’s family – his grandfather planted many of the trees in their orchard, and built a small factory in the village to can the fruit in the 1930s. Nigel points out the shed that it used to occupy, and even shows us one of the lovely old blue labels that were used on the cans.

People used to come from miles around to buy Kea plums for jam-making – Nigel has vivid memories of busloads of robust ladies from Camborne and Redruth descending on Coombe with baskets and buckets to bear the fruit away in. It’s a glimpse into an almost vanished world, in which the working life of the village was set by the seasons:  dredging oysters in the autumn and winter months, ‘barking’ the oak trees for resin in the early summer (it was used for tanning leather), then harvesting and processing plums and other fruit from late July.

Nigel tells us that the profuse blossom should mean a bumper year for plums, though much will depend on the weather – heavy rain too close to ripening can cause the fruit to split. But if conditions are right, the orchard will yield several hundredweight of plums. Nigel and Rosemary shake them from the trees onto groundsheets using a 15-foot plum crook, and Rosemary says that on one particular afternoon she reckons she gathered up a ton of fruit single-handed.

Krystal and I leave Coombe with our heads buzzing with ideas. All the blossom has turned my mind to haiku (I lived in Japan for a while, and have happy memories of blossom viewing parties, drinking hot sake beneath the cherry trees of my local park in downtown Nagoya). Blossom and other seasonal themes are very much part of the haiku tradition. But it’s a highly compressed form, and I wonder if it’s possible to say enough with it. On the other hand, jam-making is also a form of compression and intensification. Maybe it’s an idea worth exploring…