The Kitchen Garden Company

This year, the apple harvest was late. I don’t think I’ve ever made cider as late as November before. But, it was a bumper harvest.

Not only did we get a huge crop from our 5 small trees in our own orchard–probably one hundred and fifty pounds of Cider Apple varieties, among which were some Kingston Blacks and Cox’s Orange Pippins. But we managed to get several hundred pounds of apples from various neighbor’s orchards and abandoned orchards which date back to the 1890’s.

This weekend I fired up the Cider Press and made something like 18 gallons of cider. 10 are fermenting in another part of the house right now. We also managed to put up 22 quarts of applesauce, several pints of apple butter, and 22 loaves of a Norman-Style Rustic Apple & Rye hearth bread.

Was it a lot of work? Yes. But worth every minute of it because we have now stored an amazing amount of fruit up for the winter–all of which cost us only our time. In addition to picking out apples for the apple sauce, apple bread, apple butter and cider, I also sorted out the most unblemished and undamaged fruit to keep for as long as possible for fresh eating. My goal is to not have to buy any apples until at least January when the cold weather makes it impossible to keep fruit in the shed due to freezing.

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