As I have probably mentioned before, we have fruit to deal with, and lots of it. We have managed to process the Nanking Cherry tree of my MIL. We have a bunch in our freezer to do something with later. Our next major project is crab apples. OMG we have a lot. On the first “pick” we got two huge bowls of crab apples off of one branch and a half. We have 4 trees to do (and one wild apple tree).
We have figured a fairly quick way to pick. It requires three people, but we can fill two-three bowls in about 10 minutes. Two people hold a sheet as a catch cloth; the third person pulls rapidly and just drops them. As a sheet holder you can sometimes help with the picking with one hand, but main focus is making sure there is a large catch area.
The first night we were picking we brought the bowls directly into the house; bad idea. There was a Lady Bug parade. We kept putting them in a glass with leaves, but out they came, so we covered it a bit and added as we found more, but sometimes the ladybugs would climb out as we were trying to add to the glass. As small as they are it was hard to keep them wrangled. We had to empty the glass a few times through the processing. When the lady bugs were left to themselves they would climb the bowl to the rim, and just start walking around the bowl, hence the parade. (There were a couple spiders too, but I ignored them and my wife took care of those.) The next night of picking, we left the bowls outside for about an hour or so and most of them had vacated the bowls.
As far as processing the apples first night we tried two kinds of batches. Once batch, we topped and tailed the apples to get rid of the stem and the bottom fluff, which took a considerable amount of time considering the quantity of the apples. The other batch we just washed and threw in the pot, to see if we could negate the topping and tailing to expedite the process. Once they were boiled for about an hour we processed them in the food mill we bought from Bed Bath and Beyond to get rid of the seeds and what not. We have come to the conclusion, we can save the topping and tailing and just boil them. Once through the food mill, it takes all the needed stuff out, and tastes the same. Yay on that one.
For the first batch, we made 7 trays of fruit leathers by just taking the apple sauce from the food mill, adding corn starch to taste, and pouring onto the dehydrator. In one of the trays we added cinnamon. The second batch we have processed so far, we just froze into Ziploc baggies as flat bricks.
As a little note, it is easier to process the apples while still warm in the food mill, than processing them cold. More pliable I guess.
This weekend is going to be an apple processing fiasco. The frost is coming and so we have to get as much off the trees as soon as possible. In order to accommodate the huge amount of bricks we will be freezing we have purchases a second small upright freezer. I will try and take photos this time around to give an idea of the process. By the end of this weekend, I may hate crab apples, or love the process.
This year we probably won’t make it to do anything with the berries we have, as we think some are choke cherries, and some others that might be edible, but haven’t confirmed, so we haven’t got the time to organize what to do with them. I guess that will be next year’s project.
When trying to figure out the best way of processing the crab apples, we ended up watching a YouTube video of making crab apple jelly. It looks a lot easier than I thought, so we will probably give it a try, once we have everything processed into apple sauce and frozen.
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