Trees, apples, veggies oh my

Happy to be cultivating too

I can’t tell you how many times I sat here thinking of what to write first when the raucous laughter, ‘raaawr’ shouts and gleeful snickers interrupted my contemplations. Yes, those are two boys (men really) playing ping pong. They’re brothers and they take this seriously. My hubs disparaged my lack of game. My serves were either pathetic and snuggled that little net in the middle or I used too much power and the ball mysteriously went for hub’s head. Hubs, if you’re reading this, I have no idea how that happened a couple of times. Scooter referees the game, interjecting with pointed barks when he wasn’t chomping on a bone. 

If you’re on the Insta thing or knows-all Facebook, you might have seen a photo I’d posted this weekend about buying trees. Hubs finally agreed to go tree shopping with me. I was thinking like six or eight trees but he had to one up me with eleven. Okay, I’ll go along. Right up until we’re planting them that evening and he disappears to get some left over tile pipe to put around the trees. And I’m the one left digging the holes. How does that happen? I dug the majority of them but I saved two for hubs to dig. Mwuahaha! 

Scooter was a most un-helpful pup ever. He was trenching and digging three deep holes looking for moles. I guess we should’ve buried a bone where we wanted him to dig, eh?

                                   

              

Really peering down that tunnel his nose is in.

After we admired our work, I asked hubs if he wanted to plant the eight shrubs we’d also gotten. The look of disbelief was comical and I countered with all seriousness. Apparently he wanted his date night out beer (and supper) more than planting shrubs. I mean, really. Beer or shrubs? Haha.

This year has been quite the adventure in canning. As the season draws near I decided to try my hand at making apple butter. It was really quite easy. I’d already made the apple sauce and frozen most of it. I may have been at no more canning point that day. My mom’s recipe called for ten cups of applesauce so I had to modify it a little because my blender only holds seven cups.

The first part of the process, getting the apples ready.

In this photo I painstakingly did each apple. (Afterwards I learn of this lovely little gadget called a Victorio that takes boiled apples and separates the skins and seeds from the pulp. I think I'll be investing in one of those for next year because six hours straight of one by one was not my cup of tea. Not shown is the apples simmering over low heat with occasional stirring (they will burn, I did that) and going into apple sauce mode. I made several gallons of apple sauce at once and then stored it all in the fridge until I had sufficiently recuperated enough to start phase 2: apple butter. (I did save some apples from the sauce pot and put them on my dehydrator to make apple chips.) I filled two and a half 5 gallon buckets with apple peelings and cores if you were wondering how many apples I processed.

Phase 2 started with texting my mom (a couple of times, finall got it) for her apple butter recipe. Now these apples were the Goldilocks on the sweet scale so I didn't need to add any sugar (otherwise add sugar incrementally and taste). 

I loaded my 7-cup blender with apple sauce and then I added: 

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon; 

1/2 teaspoon each of cloves, allspice, nutmeg. 

Blend until all incorparted evenly.

Her recipe didn't call for nutmeg but I had seen other recipes where they added it and I liked the flavor. 

Since I had a lot of applesauce and spices to blend up, I put each new batch in one big container till I had it all mixed. And yes, there was a lot of dishwashing involved (no dishwasher = me handwasher).

 

 

Phase 3 was canning. This is the fun part because all the tedious measuring, stirring, what have you is past. I used pint jars (that's what I had on hand) but whatever size is your preference. Quart jars might be over doing it a touch. Using my handy little funnel, it also measures head space (the space left in the top of the jar, I easily filled the jars. I did leave a half inch of headspace for proper sealing. My little magnet wand saves burning my fingers in the hot water where the seals and rings are soaking. Wipe the jar rim with a towel (ensures a clean, full seal), place the seal on and screw on the ring. I lowered the jars with this sweet tool (above) into the canner bath. You can see by comparison how big the canner bath is to the standard stew pot. It's also one of the bigger ones on the market, holding seven quarts max at a time.

Boiling away! With an inch of water covering.

Yes, normally the lid is on during the boiling of the product/jars. This was taken in the five minutes you let it stand with the cover off and the heat turned off.

The finished product!

 I use apple butter like you would jelly. It's delicious and a nice fall treat. It also makes great gifts.

 May the final days of September be good to you, the coffee perky and harvest bountiful.

PS Since I had time to fill and an overabundance of cucumbers I made the final final batch of pickles, spicy and a batch of salsa because, you know, an overabundance of tomatoes.

Spicy pickles and salsa.