Apple Day

We have processed raspberries, cherries, peaches, blueberries, apricots, pears and plums - hundreds and hundreds of plums. But today was the day of the apple. Our little orchard didn't do so well this year. Several of the trees bore almost no fruit. I suspect an irrigation problem. And the apples that were there were small. I have been dithering. Picking a bucket here and there and drying them - making a couple of crisps, a couple of pies.... But not doing what I need to do - make applesauce which I use all year in my baking as a substitute for oil and sugar - especially in muffins. The thought of working so hard on all those little apples... I put it off. Hoped they would grow bigger...

It is forcasted to dip below freezing tonight for the first time. So yesterday I picked all my peppers and today I hauled the last of the tomatoes out of the garden and harvested my mint and lemon grass. But the big job was the apples. Starting in the morning, Rhiannon and I and later Kaetlyn and her friend, peeled, cored and chopped apples. (I love doing this with my girls and feeling the connection to generations of mothers and daughters before us and hopefully after us)I made 3 batches of apple sauce (one more to go), 1 batch of juice and the fruit dryer is full, there is a large blue bin in the food storage room full of red delicious and my unknown variety that is sweet and crunchy and my favourite, there are buckets full sitting in the kitchen waiting to be made into the last batch of applesauce, the last apple pies and crisps and some apple butter and the fruit drawer of the fridge is so full you can barely open it. It is the day of the apple.

And to throw in a little variety, I had to process my tomatoes that have been ripening inside to make room for those left out on the vine. I decided on a big pot of tomato sauce (which I have never made before) and canned the rest - so I added 9 more quarts to the 39 already downstairs. My ultimate goal would be to put up enough tomatoes for our entire year. That would be a lot of tomatoes! (isn't that an amazing tomato? I grew that! Fertilized it with my pee, too! [1 part pee to 5 parts water = a good nitrogen fertilizer for your plants])

So it is midnight now. I've been in the kitchen all day except for the time I took Rhiannon to her violin and piano lessons and went to the hardware store to buy an apple-corer-peeler-thingey.

Time for bed and apple dreams....