Thursday, October 28, 2010

Growing Apples

Remember this photo:


We have two established apples trees on the farm. Those flowers have turned int this:


After a highly scientific taste test, the Nephew and I have determined that they are Golden Delicious or a close relative. The color, blushing, russetting of the skin, flesh texture and taste all seem to indicate this.

Pretty amazing. There were so many apples that I had to prune the apples in July. For every apple currently on the tree I probably took off four. Pruning does many things. It makes sure that the apples grow to a decent size instead of growing a bunch of small apples. As the apples increase in size, the also increase in weight. Pruning makes sure that the tree limbs don't stress too much and break. As it is - the limbs look like this:


One of the problems we had this year is deer. They do this:

 It's pretty easy to see how they get in. This will be fixed soon. This is also where Cinnamon bolts out of the yard.


The Lovey, a lover of gadgets (and me, of course!) has invested in two motion detectors. One turns on a light when it senses motion. This one sends out a too-high-for-humans-but-just-right- for-deer noise. After their installation, the deer seem to stay away. Phew.


I've harvested about 1/5 of the apples on the tree. I need to get the rest off and into cold storage. There have been many batches of cobbler and applesauce. I'm going to try my hand at apple butter. Today I'll be dehydrating apples. I am saving my skins and cores to try my hand at making pectin (to add as a thickener for jams and jellies). But that's another story.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow-that is a lot of work. I'm not surprised you are doing it:-) Wait til next year. That's what I'd be saying, as I shook my fist at those deer. So. Apple butter for Christmas this year?