Canning

Late in September, J's aunt Peggy called me up and said, "let's can!"  I said okay, and she came over to help us can all our pears and apples.  She is simply amazing.  Unfortunately, we had already given or thrown away (due to overripeness or bugs) most of our apples and pears (unbelievable how much fruit our trees produced).

We thought our apples beyond saving, because we hadn't sprayed and quite a few of them had holes in them.  Peggy showed me that until you actually open up the apple, you don't know if it is good or bad.  Some that I would have thought would be completely ruined only had a small area that could be cut out and the majority of the apple was still good.  There were others that only had a small hole that I thought would be good, but when we opened it up, was completely eaten away.  Quite amazing. 

Most of our pears were either too overripe or under ripe to use.  We were able to get five cans of pears, however, so I call that a success.  Our apples took the majority of our canning, however, and we still have two boxes of apples that we didn't get to.  It was twelve hours of washing, cutting, peeling, and cooking.  It was fun.  I had never canned before, so this was a learning experience for me.  There is a deep satisfaction from knowing that we did all the work.  The fruit came from our trees--we picked, washed, cut, cooked, and now we will have fruit throughout the winter.  We made applesauce and apple crisp filling (which can be used in so many things, like apple crisp, apple pie, on top of pancakes, or even just by itself) with the apples. 

I was amazed at how big some of the apples had grown.  We are talking much bigger than the average supermarket apple.  More than a few were bigger than softballs.  Even though we thought we got all the fruit from the trees, we are still finding apples and pears falling to the ground that we missed.  Wow.  Well, we definitely know what to expect for next year!




I have been amazed at how sweet and good the fruit has turned out.  So much better than store bought.  I am excited for next year--now we know more what to do and expect, we will be better prepared.  It had been obvious to us that the previous owners hadn't pruned the trees for some time, so we didn't think we would get a good bounty this year.  We were certainly mistaken! 

On my wishlist is my own processor so that I can get the canning done a little earlier so we don't waste as much fruit.  We also have the cherry trees in the spring, and the four trees we thought were plum are actually called kumquat (it is like a mix between an apricot and a plum but they are tiny--maybe twice the size of a grape at most) .  They are so delicious, but not practical for canning.  We are thinking next year we will make some jam and preserves from them, but this year we just picked and ate them (they don't last off the tree for more than a few days).