Archive for the ‘Crops – Fruits’ Category
October 2, 2009 – Applesauce Day
I’ll spare you the details of the processing, but today might be a record canning day at high hopes! The girls spent about three hours peeling apples, and we had some bags of apples in the freezer from earlier maturing trees. We made nine canner’s worth of applesauce. Apples take a while to cook into sauce, so nine batches is a good day’s output.
You’ll notice that the applesauce is red – we had a bunch of frozen strawberries, frozen cherries, and plenty of raspberries. So, the applesauce is mixed with those fruits – it is tasty! The total put up for the day is 28 quart jars, 35 pint jars, and 32 1/2 pint jars which are great for lunches. All in all, it’s the equivalent of about 53 quarts of applesauce. Fortunately (or unfortunately), there are still lots of apples left on the trees!
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #135″
July 20, 2009 – Fine Apple Crop (so far)
The apple trees have set a tremendous amount of fruit this year. Today I tried to make the trees resemble apple trees more so than grapevines. In the first go-round, I probably picked a couple of 5 gallon buckets of golf-ball sized and smaller apples from four trees.
But the William’s Pride apples are further along and won’t be long before they are ready. I think they are amazingly crisp and tasty for an early apple.
one year ago…”Martin’s View of the Swamp”
July 6, 2009 – First Pear!
We’ve been waiting for many years to get our first pear. The pears have been among the slowest of all the fruit trees to give fruit – the cherries, apples, peaches, and plums all beat the pears.
This is one of about a dozen on this tree.
June 1, 2009 – Dead Peaches
OK, so today’s picture isn’t so upbeat, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless. We’re on the fringe of the peach range (most people would say we are out of the range), but we’ve planted peaches nonetheless. Last year was an incredible production year – we harvested many bushels of peaches and sold them, dried them, ate them fresh, and canned about 60 quarts of them.
However, the fragility of the trees comes through this year. The last winter’s unusually cold temperatures below -20 must have been too much for some of the trees. Some of them are dead, and others have leafed out substantially less than usual. That means it’s time to plant some more next year!
one year ago…”Miniature Horse Grooming”
April 30, 2009 – Plum Blossoms
We continue to be in a dark, cold weather pattern. Hard penance to pay for the 80 degree day last week. Low overcast with continual wetness starts to feel oppressive after a while. I’m worried that the wetness, cool temps and wind will prevent the pollinators from getting out to the fruit trees.
The plums are first out of the gate and in full bloom.
one year ago…”Wind Turbine Foundation Poured”
April 21, 2009 – Apple Blossoms Soon
Now that the weather is really starting to warm up, the fruit trees are on the verge of their spring splendor.
I’m very curious to see how the trees react to last year’s bumper crop and the -20 temps we had last winter. The peaches are particularly vulnerable. Stay Tuned!
one year ago…”State Envirothon Champs”
March 15, 2009 – Prunings
Now that the pruning has been completed, it is time to haul away all the leftovers. Rather than many trips with the two-wheel cart, I thought I’d fire up the old garden tractor and use the small hay wagon.
Of course, by the time the battery gets charged, then the drive belt slips off the tractor and takes lots of knuckle scraping and colorful language to get it back on, everything worked fine!
March 11, 2009 – More Pruning
I discovered last weekend that fruit tree pruning is a great complimentary activity to boiling maple sap. I can prune a tree for 15-20 minutes, take a needed break by wandering over to the stove and throwing another chunk of wood in the fire, and so it goes. Today it was frightfully cold, down to the single digits – I’m hoping this is the last stretch of lows in the single digits for the season.
What remains on these fruit trees is to pick up the branches and haul them off to be burned. I must admit, it gives me great satisfaction to see a well-pruned tree. Even when passing by another farmstead, seeing a pruned tree engenders a feeling of care and competence on the part of the owner. Likewise, when I see a fruit tree is disrepair, reaching towards the sky in a tangled mess, it makes me sad that the tree does not have a caretaker.
one year ago…”Thermal Imaging”
March 4, 2009 – Tree Pruning
It seems like the fruit tree pruning time has snuck up on me this year. It’s just been so cold, I haven’t been able to get out.I always think I should be able to get it done in one day – but I keep planting more trees and they keep growing, so it is more than a one day job – besides, the hand begins to hurt after a few hours of pruning and sawing.
Here’s a peach tree before the pruners take to the limbs.
And the tree after its annual haircut. Looking at it now, I see a couple more cuts I need to make!
one year ago…”A First Melting”
September 22, 2008 – Apple Peeling, 2008 Style
The latest round of apple-peeling was assigned to the girls and they approached it 2008 style.
They dragged out an extension cord, a clock radio that has an IPod docking station and an IPod player to help pass the time. I much prefer the IPod in the docking station to the earbuds, even if that means I can hear music that I might not have picked. Got to keep the help happy, productive, and talking to each other!
one year ago…”Marshall County Sheriff “takes out” Martin”.
September 17, 2008 – Apples, Apples Everywhere
The wet spring produced a bumper apple crop. We’re relatively absent orchardists as far as spraying goes, so besides some dormant oil in the spring and being fanatical about picking up the deadfalls to feed the animals, our apples for the most part are not things of beauty.
But we get enough to eat, and preserve. This year we’ve made raspberry applesauce, peach applesauce, blackberry applesauce, and apple applesauce.
Since the freezers are full, we don’t have much room for frozen apples for winter pies, so I tried canning apple pie filling. It required a type of ingredient that isn’t readily available, something called Clear Jel A, a type of starch that holds up under the processing time in the boiling water canner. The finished jars look wonderful! Linda mentioned that someone at work wanted to buy one – my answer was – he couldn’t pay me enough to part with one of the seven jars! Depending on how the time goes, I’d like to make some more.
one year ago…”Turkey Roosting”.
September 7, 2008 – Plums!
This is the year for the plum tree in the front yard next to the driveway – the tree is now about 20 feet tall and up until this year, had not produced fruit – I was ready to give up on it and replace it with something else.
But this year it has come through with flying purple colors – baskets upon baskets of plums – plum sauce is put up for yogurt and ice cream, whole plums, plum preserves, and plum and vodka soaking in the basement.
one year ago…”Photo Friday – Purple”.
September 6, 2008 – Plum Harvest
Sometimes it’s nice to have a boy who likes to climb trees – especially when there are plums to get near the top of a tree that might not hold the weight of a full-grown adult.
You can see Martin’s head peeking out from the middle of the tree. He’s a bit cautious as he wanted to wear his bike helmet.
one year ago…”Raspberries and Apples”
August 20, 2008 – Peach Basket
This basket of peaches was just too beautiful not to share.
We can now see the end of the peach season. This picture is also a bit of food for thought for all those naysayers that told us central Iowa was too far north to grow peaches!
