I am glad that September is nearly over for one reason: no more apples. Even though we hard pruned my parent's apple tree last year in the hopes of getting a reprieve from the exceptionally prolific tree, it was not enough.
Shocked from the stress of the hard pruning, the apple tree took up the challenge. "Don't want so many apples, you say?" it said as the apple blossoms bloomed in the spring. "I'll show you!" and then the tree laughed and laughed and rained down buckets and buckets and coolers and wagons full of apples this fall. It was more than a little ridiculous.
At the beginning of harvest season, I am always a bit excited about the thought of hoarding food for the winter.This year, my mom and I canned 100 pounds of peaches and pears and we were feeling pretty good about that.
I brought my husband home a bag of sweet peppers and five pounds of mixed hot peppers that, given the fact he is the only one who eats peppers in our house, we decided that we would pickle and can the peppers for his use this winter. I also dropped off some of the hot peppers at my brother's house and "forgot" to tell him they were hot. Later, I learned that he nearly died from taking a big bite out a pepper he thought was sweet. It was not sweet.It was a yellow death pepper of some sort. I think peppers are gross so I didn't know. Of the peppers we canned, only one jar exploded in the cupboard, so that was a win.
Not to be outdone by our continued canned success, my mother ordered 50 pounds of beets for pickling. Upon picking them up from the farm, she called me to let me know that 50 pounds of beets was a lot of beets.
Luckily, I was busy the day she was canning beets so I didn't have to help. After preparing beets, the kitchen always looks like you have butchered a large, bloody animal or have prepared a pig for ritual slaughter. Plus, the beets stain your hands purple and that irritates me. In punishment for not helping, I was only allowed to take two jars of beets.
But the apples - the apples nearly killed us.
The first batch of apples we worked with was 200 pounds. Yes, we weighed the apples because otherwise no one would believe us. We made 15 pies plus a few apple crisps, four batches of applesauce and we still had apples left over. We heard that the winery was taking leftover apples but we were too late and they were filled up by the time we tried to lovingly get rid of them.
Then my parents took the rest of the apples off the tree and we had another 200 pounds. We gave away another 100 pounds of apples to anyone who would even look at them fleetingly and my rockstar mother proceeded to make apple jelly. I had long since given up in defeat. The apples had me beat and I was tired of looking at them.
Some would say that we should have just given them all away or thrown them out but both my mother and I like to have emergency food (really it's just fruit) that we have preserved ourselves. In the event of a zombie apocalypse, by god, we will have apple pie (until the freezer stops working and then we would just have soggy pastry and spoiled apples in tin pie plates). The apple tree nearly had us beat this year but we managed to pull through anddefeat the evil tree.
I am really hoping that the tree cuts us some slack next year. We could use a break. Plus, we need some time to eat all of the pies and applesauce before making more.
