Sunday, October 14, 2012

Apples Galore!

Every time I head up toward my grandmother's house, I go home with a new and brilliant treasure.  Heading up for my sister's wedding was no exception!

I got apples!!!

apples
Look at all that!  Wooooo!!!
Alright, ok... I didn't actually bring all of that home.  Those are the apples that were picked long before I arrived.  We weren't able to come the week that they were picked, so I grabbed up many of the leftovers.

That's a lot of leftovers, right?!  The basket on the far left is the one that I started to fill with gorgeous red and yellow fruit.

So what kind of care goes into these glorious balls of joy?

Well...  none.  

No, really!  She has three trees in the yard, and the bugs and bees get to work on pollinating them.  Granted, if the region has been dry she'll give them a small amount of water, but she does nothing else.  

And they're yummy!

Part of the reason she doesn't have to do anything with them is probably due to their age.  

They're pretty old.  No... I mean really, amazingly old. Their root systems, therefore, are well developed and strong.

Two of them are around twenty years old, but they were planted after a vole (or was it a vore?) tunneled underneath the original trees.  Two died, and had to be replaced.

The oldest tree, however, is over thirty years old... and still producing!  

old apple tree





As you can see, the critter attack caused her to have to cut quite a bit of the tree, but the branches on the far left and right are quite healthy.  There are even some apples still hanging on them!

Sweet!

I figure I'll be making several apple recipes, drying apples, and just biting into those raw, freshly picked apples.  Apples that aren't sprayed with a single chemical are one of the best treasures we can find.  Not only are they better for the environment, but they're better for our bodies.

And in the long run, they end up costing less!  Score!



2 comments:

  1. oooooh! I'm so jealous! I've had dreams of bushels of apples for apple butter and sauce.

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  2. And you just made me realize that I really, really want to make apple butter! Thank you!

    ReplyDelete