Last Saturday the three older kids went on a trip with Deedee and Papa over the pass to Yakima. While they were there they picked two boxes of apples: golden delicious, empire and gala. They brought them home and dropped them off in our garage so of course, what did we do Monday morning?
We picked more apples!
Our two semi dwarf braeburns have been loaded this year (making up for last year when we didn’t get a single good apple off of either one) and the apples have just started turning red.
Beautifully crisp, with a tangy, sweet/tart flavor.
Not perfect apples, by any means. We don’t do anything to control for coddling moths, so a lot of the apples had worms in them. Even more had calcium spots. These are hard brown spots in the flesh that (so the internet tells us) are a result of calcium deficiency when the fruit is ripening.
Maybe next year we will do something about the moths, and replete the calcium. All those apples are just the good ones off the little tree. The big tree to the right is still untouched. All the windfalls are in the white bucket for eventual distribution to our feathered friends.
This apple is for Winnie?
I turn my back for a second.
The mechanical apple peeler was a big hit, as well it should be. Such an elegant little device, peels, cores and slices all in one handy little hand-powered machine.
And it makes beautiful ornaments.
And accordions.
In addition to sauce and pie filling, we made dried apple slices. Judging by how hard it was to get any of them put into a container for storage before they disappeared, it seems they were a hit.
Two of the first jars of applesauce popped and leaked in the first batch. After that we increased the headspace and decreased the boil and they seemed to come out fine.
Unfortunately, we forgot to take a picture of the finished haul, but it was 13 quarts of pie filling, 15 quarts and 9 pints of unsweetened sauce and six pints of sweetened sauce. And we still have a box of apples and a whole tree of apples that we haven’t even touched yet!
Little Farm in the Big City 