Got apples?

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

Wondering how the apple harvest is going for everyone?  And what do you plan to do with them?  We're having a bumper crop in our family orchard this year with minimal or no scabbing.

We started planting apples in 2001 with 10 bare rooted cuttings from Indian Creek that were "pruned" to the size of Harry Potter's wand.  This July, I stood in our orchard for the first time and realized, "We have actual trees here...bearing lots of fruit...it's like an orchard?"

Have been enjoying siting trees from the car window too:  lots of abandoned free fruit out there.

I don't have a lot of time this year, but I plan to press cider and put up applesauce for sure as well as tuck some away in the root cellar.

[Krys Cail]

We did two runs of cider from the apples on our big backyard tree, two of the trees in our next-door neighbors orchard, and a few trees in the neighborhood.  Nice mix-- the second round we threw in some pears, too.  We can get TONS of unsprayed pears at the old orchard down the road.  Have not yet, but will soon put up some pears.  Have plenty of applesauce left still from last year. And now hundreds of quarts of apple, apple-blackberry and apple-pear juice.  So, from here on, I think we just eat apples, make some pies, and maybe put them in salads.  Wonderful time of year, eh?

[Toby Dean]

How are you folks pressing the apples? I am just starting to get apples, already got plenty  of peaches, plums, asian pears and pears.

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

I have an apple press and will be hosting an IthaCan event for unsprayed apples.

[IthacaNancy]

Our 'trees' were planted in the spring of 2010 and no apples made it to maturity this year (or last). We had some peaches, a couple of pears and the birds enjoyed a nice crop of sour cherries.

I'd love to be directed to some organic apples. A friend is willing to share her press, but she only wants organic apples in her press. I'd been planning on going to Silver Queen Farm and I'm not sure how much they have sprayed this year.

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

Just around the corner from Silver Queen on the Finger Lakes Nat'l Forest, there are apple trees in a cow pasture that the public is free to pick from.  Fellow IthaCanners, Sharon & Shirley & I went there last year and found plenty -- this year, I imagine there are a lot more.

[Joey Diana Gates]

Hemlock Grove Farms sells their organic apples through Sweet Land Farm.

[Rachel Firak]

I like wild apples. They aren't as sweet and tender as cultivated varieties- maybe that's why they aren't as buggy and never need to be sprayed to produce great fruit! But they're still great for preserving And you can use the apple without peeling, so you have access to the nutrients right under the layer of skin. The flavor, of course, varies from tree to tree, so I do a lot of sampling and keep coming back to trees that make great fruit. One tree outside the laundromat in Varna, for example, produces fruit that tastes just like Golden Delicious when ripe. The trails around Monkey Run have a lot of Rose family plants and is a great place to find apples, crabapples, hawthorns, rose hips, and occasionally pears.

There's a small stand of wild pear trees on public land in Dryden that I've been visiting, between the Town Hall and the Dryden Community Garden. They are loaded with amazing fruit and the fruit is falling regularly. There are apple trees nearby too, but they're almost done now.

 

As for what to do with them: This year I dried them, made apple molasses ("boiled cider"), made wild-fermented apple cider vinegar, extracted apple pectin, and made spiced apple jam with no added pectin or sugar.

[Joey Diana Gates]

I chop them up and put them in a big soup kettle on the woodstove (yes it's going today :) with some spices and make apple butter. Once it is ready I put it in glass jars and into the freezer it goes.