Unannounced to me it is apple season. Yes apparently this is the time of year that you pick a crap load of apples and spend hours upon hours peeling, coring and slicing them to create all of your favorite apple treats. Apple pies, apple crisps, apple chips and apple sauce. Anything your heart desires with the word "Apple" can be achieved with a little family team work and elbow grease. Amy's Aunt and Uncle Marge and Dale Magnett have apple trees on their farm. This year's crop was good so they invited their family to come pick apples if they desire. When I heard Amy's sister Steph was coming in from Oklahoma to help pick and peel apples with Dale and Carolyn I thought to myself "She's nuts!" I mean, why on earth would you travel 4 hours to pick and peel apples? I was really worried about her! I had no idea what a huge undertaking this was, nor did I know just how tiring it could be. If you have never experienced this I encourage you to keep it that way! Just kidding, but if you do decide to take on such a crazy project make sure you do it with your family because that is what makes the job so much fun. With the Anderson family there is always a project and it always involves the family working on it together. This is one of the things about them I have enjoyed so much since I joined their clan. I encourage all of you to incorporate this into your family if you don't already. I have seen first hand what a wonderful family bond it creates and with the family being under attack by our society we need to use every tool possible to help keep it together. Thank you Dale and Carolyn for providing such a great example! In about a day and a half we made 60 quarts of apple pic filling, 8 pies, 5 crisps, 2 quarts of apple sauce and many, many batches of apple chips!!!
(that is melted chocolate on their lips - they were getting bored with apples)
It is A LOT of work! Last year, my mother-in-law helped me prepare a bushel of apples to can apple pie filling. We got nearly 25 quarts out of it in one day. Just tonight, I made a crisp with a jar we canned. DELICIOUS! We used to find an orchard that would let us actually pick the apples, but they are few and far between anymore due to liability issues. Climbing into the tree and getting "Just the right one" is half the fun!!
ReplyDeleteWhat about the hairnets? How could you forget those????
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