Whew! We bought a house a few months ago that came already stocked with, among other things, three mature apple trees. I have had so many apples this year I don’t know what to do with them all!
I have made applesauce until my freezer is full, canned filling for a dozen pies, dried apples for snacks throughout the winter, and had friends over to make applesauce and take it far, far away from here. I have given away apples, probably numbering in the hundreds, even had a few people pick their fill directly off the tree. And still I have probably 400 apples left on my back porch for whatever I can think of to do with them!
I have learned a lot about apples this year. For example, it takes about 10 of my apples to make a pie, 15 or 20 to make a 9�? x 13�? apple crisp, and about 60 to make a gallon of applesauce. Dried fruit rolls are a great treat to make with extra applesauce, but did you know that a 6�? x 1�? strip of apple fruit roll is the same as eating a whole apple? That takes about as much effort as chewing up a vitamin! And a hungry three-year-old does not appreciate the potential gastrointestinal consequences of eating four of those strips in one sitting.
I have learned the value of doing little jobs frequently, so they don’t become big impossible jobs. When those apples started falling off the tree, I was not ready to do anything with them, so I didn’t. But they kept falling and falling, and as I got more behind I began to avoid the tree so I didn’t have to think about how many rotting apples I was grinding into the grass. Several weeks and many apples of prime harvest season were lost in this way. Then finally my husband helped me pick them all up one Saturday. We must have put two thousand apples in the green waste bin. After that, I was finally ready to keep up with the falling apples. Now I know that next year, I have to go out every morning and give a little love to the tree and the fruit it is producing.
These apples have also shown me the joy of sharing. I love the smiles I get from everyone I give them to. Nobody has turned me down, and several have mentioned thanks again, weeks after the fact. It’s so much fun that I may just load up a wagon with bags tomorrow and start down the block to meet some of my neighbors. Yes, this apple harvest has been a little overwhelming, but I think I’m going to get used to it in the years to come.