I have so few words this week. Mostly pictures. We are working like crazy to be good stewards of the bountiful fruit harvest God blessed us with this year.
The branches in the orchard are literally snapping under the weight of our largest harvest yet.
We’ve been blessed by friends willing to come labor with us, we could never do this without help!
Labor Day we pressed 73 gallons, and estimate that is only 1/4 of our apples!
(These gallons were for the freezer, thus the head space in the jugs)
Thanks to my dear friend, September, for the above photos and all their family’s help that day!
On days we’re not pressing, we are making sauce. It’s so fun to have two helpers in the kitchen this year, with Claire graduating to the kitchen crew.
Pears are also ripe, and even the littlest man was able to help pick our little dwarf tree clean.
Every meal contains apples! Here’s an oven pancake. We’ve also enjoyed pork chops with applesauce, and there’s a pie on the agenda today for a certain man’s birthday today! (Happy birthday, Jeremy!)
Jesse is my right hand in the kitchen anymore. Here he is cranking out yet another batch of applesauce.
Meanwhile, I was paring pears.
Tomorrow we’ll be pressing cider again. If you’re in the area, please feel free to stop in! I make a big pot of chilli for the helpers and everyone goes home with fresh (free!) cider! Email me if you need directions. We’d love to see you!
And if you’d like to follow the fun on instagram, I’m @trinaholden and am using the hashtag #holdensciderpress to share pictures of our vintage cider press in action!
Oh now I am craving apples! Especially apple crisp! That apple oven pancake looks delicious – please share your recipe. 🙂 Putting up a harvest can be so tiring (I’m finally about done with zucchini!) but so rewarding as the months go by.
It looks like so much fun and so exhausting, but the good kind of exhausting. I want to help press cider! 🙁 I’ve made applesauce a few times over the years with friends and once we made apple butter too. The smell of apple butter slowly cooking in the oven is indescribably awesome and the taste just can’t be compared to anything found in a store. 🙂
I LOVED this! Thanks for sharing!