Applesauce

When you have lots of apples you have lots of things you can do with them.  Making applesauce consumes apples fast.  Lodi apples aren’t much for juice and they don’t keep well as apples. 

The apples are first quartered and cored and then cooked down until they are soft.

Then they are run through the colander and cinnamon can be added for flavor.

Two bags packed with sauce and ready for the freezer.

Weekend Garden Report August 29, 2009

The Bachelor Buttons  and Cosmos are thriving.

Dolgo Crabapple is loaded this year.  It won’t be long and they will be ready to pick.

The Pear tree is not loaded but has a nice crop.

The Connecticut pumpkin is looking good.

This French variety of pumpkin, Rouge vif d’Etamps,  has a ways to go, I am doubtful if it ripen before cold weather sets in.

Some of the tobacco crop is starting to mature as indicated by this plant starting to yellow.  This is my first attempt at growing tobacco.  I planted 8 varieties but lost track of which was which when I transplanted them to the garden.  I recently plucked the flowers from them hoping the plants would start to ripen.

The fall crops of lettuce and radishes are looking good.

Today’s harvest, a bowl of green beans, a pepper and a zucchini (not shown).

Living in the North and at 3000’ elevation makes corn an iffy crop for us but it looks like we might pick this before long.

Perhaps the best use of apples

Lodi apples are the first apples of the season for us.  They are similar to Yellow Transparent.  We have 3 semi-dwarf Lodi trees.  The 1 pictured was the most productive, the other two were about average.

Saturday we picked 10 boxes off the 3 trees.

Some of the apples we will process for drying.

This simple gadget cores, peels and slices in one operation.

Cutting the good part in half.

Ready to be placed on the dryer tray.

A dryer tray loaded up.

Our old Harvest Maid is still going even with the duct tape.  Here it is filled with apples which will only take about 24 hours before another load can go in.

The scraps ready for the compost heap.

I finally did it.

Okay, I finally did it. I have started a blog. I was inspired to do so by Granny Miller's blog. Granny Miller has chronicled their life on a small farm and filled her blog with many tips, how-to's and accounts of everyday experiences. Though she is no longer blogging the archives are still there and well worth your visit. Though my blog may not have the same depth of experience I hope that it might provide some useful information for the reader as well as provide a way for me to keep track of our accomplishments and provide proof that we are really moving forward toward our goal of becoming more independent as homesteaders.