Apple Harvest, 2010

As I’ve mentioned a few times, this year, the one apple tree in our backyard was Very Productive. WAY more than the previous two years since we moved here. During the late summer all the branches were draping down to the ground under the heavy load, but not too many dropped early, which we had problems with in the years past.

august apples
August, 2010

We had a mega-apple starting early September and going all the way through the end of November. Basketloads. Bucketloads. Tubs and tubs and tubloads. We still have no idea what type of apple they are, but they are quite delicious. Tart, but not too tart, sweet, but not too sweet. Perfect.

We did a fair bit of just collecting drops each day, to make into applesauce or apple butter. Some of the nicer apples, including many we picked off the tree, we stored for eating. We still have a load of them in the fridge, which should last us another month or so. They seem to be storing really well. It is SO AWESOME to have a free source of organic apples for this long — we eat a lot of them!

I have to say, Lonnie really did a ton of the apple work — he spent many, many nights peeling, coring and slicing apples. He is WAY better with a knife than I am, and goes so much faster! He would literally fill our huge stock pot each night with peeled apples. I helped by making some of applesauce or apple butter, and helping with the canning. But all in all, he was way more the apple guy, and I so appreciate it! I will be putting all the applesauce and apple butter to good use this year, in baked goods, crock pot meals, and more. Yum yum!

We ended up with 4-5 batches of dried apples, 6 batches of canned applesauce (plus at least two frozen), and 6 batches of apple butter. We gave a few to Emma’s school for snack, and ate (and are eating) a LOT. Hooray for apples! It is lucky that apples are one of the few fruits all of my kids will eat!

I’ll leave you with some pictures from under (and in!) our apple tree…