Last-time apples
I am blessed with the most generous people in my life.
We were told that the new family, who were a couple of weeks behind their hoped-for schedule in moving in, would not have time to do anything with the apples at our old house, and the transparents were ready. A friend lined up two of her grandkids, early teens, and a day to go pick. The thirteen year old boy was very happy, his grandmother observed, to be instructed to climb up in a tree, and he and his sister were a great help. Then Joyce took the apples to her house and we were set to come there two days later to make applesauce.
Not only her labor, but her kitchen. I don't have Carole this year to help, and I couldn't do it alone. I don't have a dishwasher or any prep space next to the stove, so this was a huge help. We're going to get an IKEA cabinet to sit between the stove and the wall, where the refrigerator has been moved out across the room, but we're not set up yet. This kitchen will be functional, I think, though it will still take some doing.
I was there for eight hours. Usually with Carole, we do two batches at a time and spread it out. These apple wouldn't wait and it was someone else's house, and we needed to just get it all done. Her canning rack takes eight jars at a time instead of my seven, which helped. She has a clamp-on big food mill, which she worked, and that helped.
We got 24 pints of applesauce and 9 pints of apple butter. Making the apple butter was a mistake in retrospect, I suppose, because of how long it took, but I was curious to try it. The ninth pint was left for Joyce's fridge, and all those jars were left to cool until I could come back a day or so later and pick them up. I left some for the helpers; picking and cutting. I was willing to split the numbers down the middle, but she said she didn't need them, so her generosity was that much greater, to share the work without gaining anything for herself except my gratitude. True love and kindness for a friend.
Absolutely fabulous, to get that last harvest, especially since it beat the largest previous yield of all time on that tree, five years ago. I think I need to take one jar over to the new folks, so they get a taste of what they're going to have for themselves.
We were told that the new family, who were a couple of weeks behind their hoped-for schedule in moving in, would not have time to do anything with the apples at our old house, and the transparents were ready. A friend lined up two of her grandkids, early teens, and a day to go pick. The thirteen year old boy was very happy, his grandmother observed, to be instructed to climb up in a tree, and he and his sister were a great help. Then Joyce took the apples to her house and we were set to come there two days later to make applesauce.
Not only her labor, but her kitchen. I don't have Carole this year to help, and I couldn't do it alone. I don't have a dishwasher or any prep space next to the stove, so this was a huge help. We're going to get an IKEA cabinet to sit between the stove and the wall, where the refrigerator has been moved out across the room, but we're not set up yet. This kitchen will be functional, I think, though it will still take some doing.
I was there for eight hours. Usually with Carole, we do two batches at a time and spread it out. These apple wouldn't wait and it was someone else's house, and we needed to just get it all done. Her canning rack takes eight jars at a time instead of my seven, which helped. She has a clamp-on big food mill, which she worked, and that helped.
We got 24 pints of applesauce and 9 pints of apple butter. Making the apple butter was a mistake in retrospect, I suppose, because of how long it took, but I was curious to try it. The ninth pint was left for Joyce's fridge, and all those jars were left to cool until I could come back a day or so later and pick them up. I left some for the helpers; picking and cutting. I was willing to split the numbers down the middle, but she said she didn't need them, so her generosity was that much greater, to share the work without gaining anything for herself except my gratitude. True love and kindness for a friend.
Absolutely fabulous, to get that last harvest, especially since it beat the largest previous yield of all time on that tree, five years ago. I think I need to take one jar over to the new folks, so they get a taste of what they're going to have for themselves.
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