We have five fruit trees on the farm that haven’t been pruned in some time, unless you count the mandatory pruning a few years ago on the apple tree that grew around the power line. Mid-summer to early-fall is a happy time for our cattle, who wait for ripe apples to randomly fall. That makes harvesting the apples a multi-person job, so that someone can use the fruit picker on a pole, while the other person guards the harvested apples in the trailer and watches out for excited kicking and pointy horns. It’s also a slobbery job with six fuzzy cows reacting to fruit stimuli like Pavlov’s dogs.
This year, we emerged victorious with two bins of fruit between two apple trees, two pear trees, and a crab-apple tree. We waited a little bit too long for one apple tree, so many of those were already mushy or half-rotten, but still thoroughly enjoyed by our bovine crowd. We did harvest one pear tree exactly on time this year – which is before they seem ripe. And the crab apples were a big surprise this year. They’re prolific, ripe, and sweet… so we picked as many as we could before the cattle got too excited for our comfort. It was definitely a one-for-me, one-for-you situation!
Here’s how we’re maximizing our fruit harvest this year through preservation:
- Dehydrated apple slices. I used a spiralizer that also functions as an apple peeler-corer-slicer, and put them in a dehydrator until they are crispy, approximately 10 hours or so.
Yield: 1/2 gallon jar, and a quart jar full.
Purpose: We’ll take them in the woods with nuts and cheese, and serve them to guests with charcuterie. I might try making a dried apple pie this year around the holidays, if there are any left, because I didn’t freeze any apples, at least not yet. - Apple scrap vinegar. I learned about this last year, and made a few quarts that we used over the winter months. Its texture and taste is a cross between purchased apple cider vinegar and kombucha, and it’s really simple to make. You take the peels and cores from making slices, cover them with sugar water (1tbsp sugar per cup of water), and let it sit at room temperature for two weeks. Then you strain it, give the scraps to thankful chickens, and let it sit for 3-4 more weeks. You can store it in the fridge for up to a year.
Yield: 1 quart of apple scrap vinegar so far, but I’ll probably make another batch with apples that are still ripening.
Purpose: We use it like apple cider vinegar, a staple in our pantry. - Crab-apple butter. I had bit more apples than I could fit in the dehydrators in one go, and a lot of tiny crab apples, so I decided to make apple butter with this mix. I made apple butter last year and didn’t need to add any sugar to it because the apples were so sweet. It was fun to have apple butter jars ready to give or share, because apple butter is a fond childhood memory. This year’s crab-apples were so sweet that I decided to include them in the apple butter batch. Last year, I used the apple peeler-corer-slicer to fill a crockpot with sliced apples and cook them for days on low. I knew I would end up wasting most of the crab-apples using that same method, so I made applesauce first, and then turned that into apple butter. I softened my apples and crab-apples on the stove, and processed them with the food mill. I had three batches, which all turned out a different color, from pale yellow to rosy red, depending on how many crab-apples were in that batch. I made 4 quarts of apple sauce and put it in the fridge. The next day, I filled the crockpot with the applesauce, added some cinnamon and allspice, and cooked it on low for about 6 hours. That didn’t seem to do anything, so I turned it on high, made sure the lid was partially open, and let it reduce that way. It cooked another 6 hours that way, eventually with the lid completely off. I put about 2 quarts of this mixture in the fridge. We were able to peel off the almost-apple-butter that had stuck to the side of the crock pot and eat it like bonus fruit leather! The next day, I heated the apple butter on the stove. After tasting it, I added about a half cup of brown sugar, two tbsp apple cider vinegar, and one tsp of vanilla. I let it reduce some on the stove while I heated jars for canning, but it tended to splatter dangerously. Next time, I would do all the cooking in the slow cooker because it splattered less.
Yield: The equivalent of one quart of apple butter – in 8oz and 4oz jars.
Purpose: I use apple butter for gift-giving, possibly with a pan of biscuits, or offering it to guests.
I currently have my first ripe pears in the dehydrator, because they don’t all ripen at the same time. And I have more apples still ripening. Preserving this fruit harvest is my favorite preservation process because it maximizes the fruit we have readily available to us on the farm. And there’s no waste! The cows enjoy the biggest part of that harvest, the chickens eat anything that gets discarded during preservation, and we’re able to make vinegar from some of the scraps for ourselves.
The best part: Many times this fall and winter, we’ll open a jar of dehydrated fruit or apple butter, smell the fruits of our slobbery labor, and smile.