Category: apple

The apples are rolling in and we decided to buy a press to try to make hard cider with them.

 

It’s raining apples

Washing station

And that’s why we wash them 🙂

All crushed and ready to go.

Packed all the way down

And the resulting yumminess. Only a few of our apple trees produce apples that are decent to eat. The rest are small and quite tart, we were surprised to learn they actually make the best cider.

They don’t eat much of it but they are happy to indulge their urge to scratch.

Contemplating our options for turning these 5 gallons into hard cider

We provided sugar for the fermentation in the form of honey & maple syrup

Every day we pick up droppings from a tree that is a bit early. We make just enough applesauce for a day, just enough for the house to smell incredible.

 

the nice ones are saved as they keep really well

the ugly ones are cooked immediately

We thought we were going to have to wait 10 years before we could produce apples but it turns out that our land came with quite a few apple trees. We took a good hike and sampled every tree we found. A good few were tart, some just not usable and a couple yielded good surprises. It also seems to be an excellent year for apples and so we find ourselves with more apple than we’ll know what to do with before we even planted a tree. They need a few more weeks to yield their exact flavor but it was a nice appetizer 🙂 It’s cool that these trees make apples that are unique to the place. We will graft the couple of good surprises in due time.

Some of them will definitely need more breathing room

Branches falling down under the weight of yumminess