Autumn Applesauce with Friends

My exploring sack full of green apples.

When we searched for a homestead, we had an uncommon list of attributes we were looking for in a property:  good schools, a south-facing hillside, some woods, bramble berries, open space for a large garden, and an apple tree or room to plant some apple trees.  Oh yeah, and a place where we could live  - an old house, a trailer, some sort of dwelling we could abide in while we built our solar home.  A place we could tear down after we moved into our new house.  The land came first.  When we found Hawk's Hill, I was blown away by the amount of apple trees -- old, needing a good pruning, but in good health and still producing.  Our upper orchard, with trees from way back in the day (1960s/70s?) produces red and green fall apples. The lower orchard was planted by old Zeke in the late 80's/early 1990s, and has green early fall apples.  Unless we have a terribly frosty spring, we usually have some apples for sauce.


Friday dawned a gorgeous September day, and we celebrated the harvest season with my friend Cheryl and her 7 year-old son, Caleb, by picking green apples for applesauce from our lower orchard.  Last spring's frosts had killed a number of the plentiful apple blossoms, leaving just the king fruit to grow fat and healthy.  The green globes we plucked, and that rained down from the tree when Caleb climbed up and shook branches for us, were crisp, juicy, and remarkably free of blemishes considering they had not been sprayed.  Tasting mildly sweet with a bite of tartness, they served the need for applesauce.

 

I scrounged in the barn for the metal basket apple picker with plucking tines a friend had kindly given us, and David attached it to a telescoping aluminum painters' pole.  Now we could reach the really massive fruits at the top of the tree!  Caleb, Cheryl and I each took turns craning our necks back, standing on the garden cart, squinting at the sun and fishing the long-poled tool clumsily around clusters of apples until we managed to scoop one or two into the basket, then lift up to snag the apples, as if setting the hook in the fish's mouth, and then pulled back to pluck them from their boughs.  We had a pretty good success rate, and cheered every time the pole swung back down like a massive crane and dumped its goods into waiting hands.  Caleb would look at each big apple, rotating it in his hands and prizing it up, then say,"This one says Cheryl on it."  or "This one has Betsy's name on it."  and dole out his prize.  We ate our fill of fresh apples, juice dribbling down our chins, and we chucked the cores for Max the dog to chase, retrieve and eat.

     The splendid September day melted away as we hauled our bushel and a half of apples back up to Soulstice, scrubbed, chopped, cooked and processed them through Cheryl's Victorio Strainer.  The mushy, seedy discards got dumped into a bucket and delivered to the chickens, who delightedly gobbled them up.  The pureed apples, we returned to the big sauce pots, and added brown sugar and cinnamon to 2 of the pots.  I rustled around in the pantry and found a jar of maple syrup from last year, and added half of that to the third pot of apple puree, until it reached a perfect sweetness, with just a hint of maple flavor.  It still gives me a tickle to think that the third pot was 100% indigenous.  Even the energy to cook the apples probably came from the solar power generated that lovely, sunny day.

 Three pots of pureed applesauce which had just been apples hanging on a tree hours ago simmered on the stove, and I could feel the bounty of the earth in the food treasure sitting on my stove top.  Imagine a jar of applesauce this winter heated in the microwave, sending its appley scent wafting through the house again as it did when the first pot of apple chunks began to boil.  What made the day melt away so quickly with so much work to be accomplished?  Cheryl's friendship.  Her memories of childhood in her mother's kitchen making apple pies and sauce; talk over the best hand-cranked apple and tomato processing equipment (Victorio Strainers beat Foley Food Mills hands down!); and Cheryl's laughter.  Caleb proudly told us they have set a challenge for themselves to avoid all refined sugar for the mont  They allow themselves local maple syrup and honey. Inspiring.

Cheryl and Caleb took home a bucket of apples that they turned into 16 quarts of sauce and a pie, and David and I jarred up our sauce and canned a dozen quarts for our winter larder.  With each jar, we will relive the memory of the sunny September afternoon spent with our friends as we eat it.

Here's hoping you find a forgotten apple tree this week, whose fruit you can retrieve for really good applesauce  -- or tart apples from a local farm market -- for an old-fashioned taste of autumn.

Happy First Day of Autumn!
Betsy