Old-Time Apples: On the Rebound?

59 and showers this morning, but there was a glorious full moon last night when the clouds cleared for a bit.

Apples are near and dear to my heart. What other food can you eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as a snack, a vegetable side, in stuffing, cooked with pork, made into juice, cookies, cakes, muffins, pie, or dry, freeze or can to store, use for decoration and bird food, and even just eat raw?

So I was fascinated by two articles that came to my attention recently, about people preserving the old varieties and even hunting them down in abandoned orchards. 

My friend and longtime blog reader sent this link about the discovery of the Red Delicious apple in her hometown in Iowa. 

Another friend sent along this article about an apple detective and preservationist in North Carolina. He has saved so many varieties, it's just amazing. I wish I'd known about him or someone like him before some of the old apple trees on our place died out. One in particular we were told was called Maiden Blush, and it was such a pretty apple. He's growing one variety we have here, the Arkansas Black. Our tree never has many apples, and they're usually small. Often the deer get to them before we do. 

Another North Carolinian is also trying to preserve the old varieties.

And in case you've never heard, the Golden Delicious and the Grimes Golden apples were both discovered right here in West Virginia. I would love to know what my old yellow apple tree is, shown in the photo above. It came up from seed 45 years ago and still produces bushels of apples every year.

I don't want to pot the link to the article on the Grimes Golden as I get a message saying it's not a safe site, although it is the West Virginia Online Encyclopedia. But here is a copy of the article posted there:

 "The Grimes Golden is one of two apple varieties originating in West Virginia, both of which are yellow apples. The first Grimes Golden was found in the early 1800s growing on the farm of Thomas Grimes near Wellsburg in Brooke County. Local legend claims that the tree grew from a seed planted by John Chapman, otherwise known as Johnny Appleseed. Soon after the original tree was discovered, a large orchard was planted nearby using scions from the parent tree.

The Grimes Golden, popular for eating, cooking, and cider production for many years, made outstanding applesauce. The fruit was of medium size or larger, with tough yellow skin and firm, juicy flesh. Although the Grimes Golden is still around, it has largely been replaced in popularity by the Golden Delicious, the second apple variety to originate in West Virginia. The Grimes Golden is thought to be a parent of the Golden Delicious apple tree.

The original Grimes Golden tree bore fruit for more than 100 years and was carrying a crop of apples when it blew down in 1905. Wood from its trunk was used to make gavels for the West Virginia Agricultural Society, and part of the trunk was preserved at West Virginia University. A stone monument was erected at the site of the original Grimes Golden tree and is still standing today."

It gets harder and harder to find the older varieties in stores these days. I was thrilled to find some Yellow Delicious and Romes in a local store recently. The larger chain stores no longer carry them, sad to say. But the efforts of these orchardists is preserving them and I believe that the old-time apples will make a comeback, simply because of their depth of flavor and the many varieties available. Why settle for the newer varieties that usually vie for sweetness and shipping hardiness, when you can have a spicy, deeply flavored, crisp old-timer?

And now, I want an apple. A Yellow Delicious, I think. Thanks, Clay County, for giving us this treat of an apple.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Covid Journal, Day 199: Putting Away the Pears

A nice 56 this morning, and a beautiful day with a high about 77. Windy and sunny. We could use rain, again. Everything is so dry.

Larry picked what pears he could reach with the apple picker and brought them in for me to wrap. 

Our pears are the old-fashioned Bartletts that must be stored a while before they ripen. For the past few years my Octobers have been so filled with storytelling that I had no time to deal with the pears. How sad is that, when we both love canned pears? So this year I'm taking care of them, wrapping them individually to ripen. We have about a bushel--which became two bushels once all the paper was added.

I finally got this little set ready for the booth yesterday, opting to retain the original, beautiful wood finish and just cover the chair seats. The table is about 36" square, and when the leaves are down it's only 12" by 36" so it can be stored away easily without taking up a lot of space. 

I used the blue toile fabric just because I wanted to display these dishes with the set. Silly, right? But so pretty.

I spent most of today working on ebay listings and setting up a 30 percent off sale in my ebay store. I hope that stimulates sales; I've been doing pretty well but would like to reduce my backlog of inventory. So fingers crossed.

And I cooked. A few days ago Larry shot two rabbits that had pretty much ruined my late cabbage. No kraut because of those two--so today, one of them was dinner. I made it like I usually make squirrel: I cooked the rabbit in water with onions, chicken broth, salt, pepper and bay leaves. I left it to simmer for about 3 hours, to get the meat nice and tender. Then I removed the bay leaves, picked the meat from the bones and put it back into the broth while I made a roux with canola oil and cornstarch; then slowly added the broth and meat, some mushrooms, rosemary and thyme, and cooked until it thickened into a nice sauce. 

I cooked some homemade noodles to go with it, along with green beans, and fried apples from a few fallen fruits from our trees. Delicious and pretty much all from our land. 

I love to cook like this. There is just something satisfying about knowing that your land is providing for you, isn't there?

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Covid Journal, Day 176: Murder Most Fowl

It's been a sunny, hot week, highs in the 80's with high humidity. No rain, although every now and then the skies clouded up. Hoping for rain this weekend.

This morning Larry found three of the new young pullets beheaded. How sad a day this is. We had 20 and all were doing so well. Now, we have to find how the murderer got into the coop, and try to figure out who he/she is. Could be a raccoon, possum, or skunk, and I hope and pray it is one of them and not a weasel or mink. The first three might be easier to catch in a trap; the last two are almost impossible.

So Larry will set a live trap this evening, and he'll spend part of today going over the coop to find any possible point of entry. It's pretty tight, but a weasel or mink can get in through a very small hole.

Another murder of the herbaceous kind was committed by deer. We planted three new fruit trees this spring, and they were doing quite well. But overnight, the deer ate them down to the trunks. I doubt any of them will survive. If you've bought any fruit trees lately, you know they're not cheap. I was so angry and disappointed. We bought two more, a pear and a peach, and we enclosed them in chicken wire cages this time. We plan to get two more, apple trees this time, and will do the same with them. That should keep the deer out.

It hasn't been all bad news here this week, however. We canned green beans and more pasta sauce, and on Thursday made 20 gallons of applesauce from our trees, with help from our son Derek. 15 gallons will go into apple butter later this fall; that part is in the freezer. The rest we canned.  I also made 12 quarts of apple pie filling and put that in the freezer.

So in addition to the peppers, green beans and other things put up earlier in the week, we've had a productive week. We planted more too--lettuce, beets after we finally got some seeds, turnips and filled in the row of peas where the seeds planted a couple weeks ago didn't come up. So we're hoping for a good late garden. The late squash and cucumbers are beginning to bear, so that's nice.

Usually by this time of the year, I am itching to go away somewhere, get a break from gardens and canning, weeds and string-trimming. But this year I don't feel that urge, surprisingly. No place seems to be more attractive than right where I am. I had considered staying at a state park for a few nights, but honestly? Home is nicer, and more private actually than a park. We've been on a few drives to find things for our booths, and that seems to be satisfying my wanderlust. At least for now.

I have been listening to the news of the fires out West, the damage from the last hurricane down South, and feel so badly for all those affected. How many thousands have been displaced in this country due to natural disasters in the past month? How terrible it must be to try to think of what to grab as you flee your home, knowing that whatever you leave behind may well be destroyed. 

And then there are the ongoing protests. While I am supportive of their cause, I feel like it's time to stop complaining and start taking steps for positive action. Destruction and anger cannot effect the change that needs to happen; only reasonable discourse and a plan to find solutions will get the results demanded. My niece-in-law, who is black, was walking with her young sons when people in a passing car hurled the N word and other insults at her. She is a teacher, a professional and a good wife and mother. I cannot imagine the hurt the incident caused her, and for what? So some sad person can feel glee at causing pain? I am angry and frustrated that this good woman and family member had to be subjected to such hate. Will our country ever find a solution? Sometimes I feel like we are making progress, and then something like this happens and it seems like we're back in the 1950's again. 

More losses this week too--a good lady in our town died from Covid after attending a wedding and apparently getting infected there, or at her church where many do not follow the guidelines. And a dear friend who has been my friend since our childhood lost her mother this week, to natural causes. No matter how old our parents, we're never ready to let them go. 

Today is my granddaughter Kate's birthday. She's become a fine woman, a teacher--we seem to have many teachers in our family. I miss seeing her, but am happy that she is well and moving along in her life as she pursues her Master's degree while working full time. How well I remember doing the same; it means little free time, but the goal is worth the price. 

So it's been a roller coaster of a week, as I still struggle through my own sadness that visits me every year on the anniversary of my late son's birthday. But there is still much to be happy about, to laugh about, to see the good in, too. I keep my eyes and my mind on that, and my heart follows their lead.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Twelfth Night

Re-posting this piece I wrote in 2009, with a few songs added. Enjoy!

Twelve nights after Christmas, Twelfth Night arrives. It is also called Old Christmas because the holiday was celebrated on January 6th in older times, under a different calendar. More on this later in this post.

photo from the book by Washington Irving, available as an online book at http://openlibrary.org/details/oldchristmas00irviarch

Bill Baker, on his website about Old Christmas, describes some of the beliefs of the Appalachian people about this day:

"Mountain people knew the Day of Epiphany as "Old Christmas". One of their beliefs concerning the Day of Epiphany was that a person should never lend anything to anybody on Old Christmas Day, because the lender would never get it back. Also, they regarded the Eve of Epiphany as a night when the Holy Spirit would manifest Itself upon the earth in many subtle ways. Upon that night, mountain folk believed, that no matter how hard the ground was frozen ... elder bushes would sprout up out of the ground."

I remember celebrating it as "Epiphany" when I was young and my family followed the Catholic customs. Epiphany, my mother explained, meant "baptism." In my reading, the word, of Greek origin, seems to have many meanings--sudden realization, awakening, or manifestation. Under the Julian calendar, this was the day on which Christmas was celebrated.

In Ireland, the day is known as "Little Christmas," or Nollaig Bheag. The men would on this day take on all the household duties for the women, so it was also known as "Women's Christmas." What a great idea! Except, of course, my husband often does my housework when he's laid off and I'm working....I'm blessed every day :-)

Because the Magi brought gifts, my mother also gave us gifts on Little Christmas. Sometimes we also gave each other little gifts like pencils, pieces of bubble gum, etc. With twelve siblings, these little trinkets could make quite a pile by our dinner plates. It was yet another way to extend the happiness and giving of the season.

Twelfth Night is the night that apple trees were wassailed. (What is wassail? Read about it on my blogpost from last year).

The trees were honored by revelers for the good food they provided. Warm wassail was poured over their roots or hung in the branches, and merrymakers circled the trees singing songs.

One song is not only praise, but also a veiled threat:

Apple-tree, apple-tree,

Bear good fruit,

Or down with your top

And up with your root.

Chamber's Book of Days describes the activities this way:

"'In the south hams [villages] of Devonshire, on the eve of the Epiphany, the farmer, attended by his workmen, with a large pitcher of cider, goes to the orchard, and there encircling one of the best bearing trees, they drink the following toast three several times:

Here's to thee, old apple-tree,

Whence thou mayst bud,

and whence thou mayst blow!

And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!

Hats full! caps full!

Bushel—bushel—sacks full,

And my pockets full too! Huzza!

"This done, they return to the house, the doors of which they are sure to find bolted by the females, who, be the weather what it may, are inexorable to all entreaties to open them till some one has guessed at what is on the spit, which is generally some nice little thing, difficult to be hit on, and is the reward of him who first names it. The doors are then thrown open, and the lucky clod-pole receives the tit-bit as his recompense. Some are so superstitious as to believe, that if they neglect this custom, the trees will bear no apples that year." — Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, p. 403.

A modern-day apple tree wassailing can be found on Mara Freeman's blog.

What is considered the "real" twelfth night varies from one place to another. Twelfth night under the Gregorian calendar is January 6th (and it is so listed in Chamber's Book of Days) ; some sources place it on January 11th or 12th; Ireland's Own places it on January 13th. Still others use Old Christmas as the starting day and place it on January 17th.

Robert Herrick described the old way of celebrating Twelfth Night in his poem of the same title, also known as "King and Queen":

Now, now the mirth comes

With the cake full of plums,

Where bean's the king of the sport here;

Beside, we must know

The pea also

Must revel as queen in the court here.

Begin then to choose,

This night, as ye use,

Who shall for the present delight here;

Be a king by the lot,

And who shall not

Be Twelve-day queen for the night here!

Which known, let us make

Joy-sops with the cake;

And let not a man then be seen here,

Who unurged will not drink,

To the base from the brink,

A health to the king and the queen here!

Next crown the bowl full

With gentle lamb's wool,

And sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,

With store of ale, too;

And this ye must do

To make the wassail a swinger.

Give then to the king

And queen, wassailing,

And though with ale ye be wet here,

Yet part ye from hence

As free from offence

As when ye innocent met here.

What Herrick referred to in the first verse (and what the alternate title also refers to) was a cake baked with a bean and pea inside. Whoever got the bean was the king of twelfth night partying, and whoever got the pea was the queen. There are many places online to find the recipe, but this one sounds delicious, and the article's introduction offers more lore about the holiday.

Will you celebrate Old Christmas, Little Christmas, Epiphany, or any other alternate holiday? You could surprise your family with small gifts on January 6th, or perhaps drink a toast to your apple trees on the 11th or 13th. You will extend the good feelings of the holidays and brighten winter with a little more cheer, and who doesn't need that?

To help celebrate this special time, here are two old Appalachian songs, Old Christmas Morning by Dwight Diller of Pocahontas county, WV and a fine preservationist of old mountain music:

and Breaking Up Christmas, featuring one of my favorite bass players, Joe De Jarnette.

Apple Howling

Have you ever been apple howling?

Once upon a time it was a widely-held tradition, especially in the British Isles. It also happened here in the US.

What was apple howling, you might ask? It's certainly not self-explanatory. Apple howling usually took place on Twelfth Night, although in some places it also occurred on Christmas Eve, and in still others apple howling occurred on January 17th, Old Twelfth Night if Old Christmas (January 6th) was observed. It's rather like wassailing, except that instead of going to homes to sing for treats, the people went out to orchards and sang to the trees.

Here is a rough description of the apple-howling evening: a batch of warm mulled cider was prepared. After drinking a goodly amount, people would take the rest out to the orchard and pour it around the roots of the apple tree. The practice often included rhymes like:

Here's to you, good apple tree!
Long may you bear hats-full,
pockets-full,
bushel baskets-full!

or:

Stand fast root, bear well top.
Pray bring us a howling good crop!
Every twig, apples big!
Every bough, apples enow!

In some regions boys would go out with sticks or whips and whip the trees while also berating them with yells and insults.

In still other areas shotguns would be brought to the orchard and powder (no shot would be loaded) would be fired into the trees while people threatened and beseeched the trees to bear well in the coming year. Sometimes two cakes were baked with a dried pea in the batter of each. One cake was for men, the other for women, and whoever got the pea would be crowned the King or the Queen of the evening.

When we wassailed our trees in 2009--looking for the pea in the cake.

You can see an apple-howling in progress here:

and here is another. Both you will notice, include Morris dancers.

You might wonder why apples were so important that people went to all this trouble to encourage the trees to bear. But when you think about it, it's no mystery. Apples played a large role in early subsistence farmsteads. Apples could be eaten raw, fried, boiled, baked, made into sauce or apple butter. They could be dried for later use or used to make pies, cakes and other desserts. Cider was a staple drink in most homes, and could be kept for months if properly stored, or turned into vinegar, which was vital to the preservation of many foods. And of course, hard cider provided many a merry evening for those who imbibed!

This year, our apple blossoms were frosted, and we had no apples. Zilch. Not one. We rely on our apples almost as much as those early people did. We make applesauce, apple butter, and apple cider. We make pie filling to freeze and sometimes spiced apple preserves. The thought of a whole year without any of these foods was appalling. Usually we have at least some apples, but this year, we were empty-handed.

So we had to buy apples to make applesauce, and let me tell you, it is nowhere as good as the sauce from our own trees. We bought cider too, when the local store had it on sale for $1.50 a gallon. I processed it in quart jars so now we have about 20 quarts of cider to last us at least a little while. We made no apple butter, a sore disappointment because this is always a family event.

A few years back we tried wassailing our trees--and that year the trees all froze so we had no apples then either! Should we try it again this year? I think we will. Maybe we didn't say the rhymes correctly, or didn't pour on enough cider. Even if it doesn't work, it would be fun to do it again.

Our apple tree wassailing, 2009

Funny--James and Michaela are now in high school and driving! How time flies.

So, do you think you might give it a try? Let me know if you do!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Little Apple Tree

There is a little apple tree in the woods close to the house.You can just see it off to the top right in the above photo from 2010. It is twisted and runty and usually has lots of watersprouts. It is not a pretty tree.

I remember when it was a baby when I first moved here, just a littel spike of a thing, I left it alone because it was not likely to make anything of itself anyway.

The little tree is in the center of this photo, hard to see, when it was in bloom, This was taken about 4 years ago,
 I've never actually taken a photo of it by itself.

My first clotheslines were ropes stretched between the trees in these woods. The little apple tree was too small to be a support but it wasn't in the way. It had its first blooms five years after I first found it. There were no apples on it, though, not that year.

Years passed. I divorced and remarried, had another son. I went off to work and to college. My sons grew up and moved out into lives of their own. Grandchildren arrived and grew up. The little tree was still there, and every spring I enjoyed its blooms. But there were no apples.The bigger trees, the oaks and the persimmons and the ash and hickory, overshadowed it and made it grow twisty. It looked odd but it bloomed and that was enough for me.

Until this year. This year it had about a dozen apples. Two or three were BIG! But most were small and runty. I picked them anyway, and this morning I used some of them to make apple pancakes.

Oh. My. Goodness. Those apples were delicious! Spicy, sweet-tart, full-bodied flavor and just the right texture.

Forty years of waiting. And finally an imperfect crop. But the little tree is still a favorite of mine, twisty and funny looking as it is. Maybe it will give us more apples one day, maybe not. It doesn't matter to me. I'm happy with it as it is.

This tree reminds me of the Aesop's fable of the farmer and his apple tree.

A peasant had growing in his garden an apple tree which bore no fruit at all. It served only as a place for crickets, grasshoppers and sparrows to get out of the heat. The little creatures often sat chirping in the tree's branches.

Disappointed that the tree produced no fruit, the man decided to cut it down.

"Please don't destroy our tree," the grasshoppers said. "Where will we sit and chirp if there is no tree here?"

"Please don't cut this tree," begged the birds. "We sit in its branches and sing to you every day. Would you not miss our songs?"

"Please leave the tree alone," said the crickets. "We rest on its bark and make our music to lighten your work. Where will we go if you cut the tree?"

"No," said the man. "The tree gives me nothing. Why should I keep it in my garden? At least its wood will warm me in my fires this winter."

The man picked up his axe and gave a mighty swing. He quickly discovered that other creatures were living in the hollow center of the tree: honeybees! The large swarm buzzed angrily as it protected its large store of honey.

"Aha!" said the man. "This tree is worth keeping after all. Who knew that it contained such treasure?" He picked up his axe and left the tree standing, and its inhabitants continued to sing, chirp and buzz.

My little tree doesn't hide such treasure. Or perhaps it does, in the sweetness and scent of its blooms, and in the unexpected pleasure of a surprise harvest.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Apple Butter Day

We had a perfect day for our annual apple butter cooking. Cool, crisp enough to see your breath in the morning, then gradually so warm we took off our jackets, then cool again as clouds moved in. But the conversations kept us warm all day as we stirred, stoked the fire, and washed jars.

George ended up being the chief stirrer this year, although everyone took a turn.

Larry minded the fire and kept up a steady stream of orneriness all afternoon, and the grandkids were there to do anything asked.

Here's the crew: Larry, Hannah's boyfriend Jeremiah (who is so tall we had to ask him to sit down so he'd fit in the frame!), Hannah, Haley, Grace, and George.

This time Jeremiah volunteered to take the photo so I could be in the picture. That was nice. George kept the pot stirred so it didn't scorch while we messed around with pictures.

 The finished product, about 32 quarts of rich brown, spicy apple butter. Mmmmmm.

Cleanup time, covering over the fire, washing up the kettle, wiping down tables, etc, takes a little time.

At the end of the day, trick or treaters! What a fine time it was from beginning to end.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Apple Pie Filling

 I've been working on getting some apple pie filling made for the freezer. So far I have nine quarts put up, and hope to do about that many more.

It's a simple process: peel, core and slice the apples. I put them in water with lemon juice to keep them from turning brown.

Then I drain off the water, season the apples with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to my personal taste, put in freezer bags and freeze.

I have no specific recipe as to amounts of any of the ingredients, just as I do not have a recipe for fresh apple pie--I am definitely a "pinch of this-dash of that" kind of cook. But you can find a good recipe at Taste of Home.



Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Reflection, and Baking Vintage

As always, the days leading up to yesterday were difficult--knowing that the anniversary date was coming, fear of how it might affect me, worry that I might get too depressed, wondering how quickly I will recover this time. It all sounds very self-involved, isn't it? And yet, who cannot be that way when grief and loss are involved? It is after all, a personal experience that is only mine and no one else's. We all deal with tragedy in our own ways.

Normally I go somewhere and stay very busy on that date, avoidance being the best route in the past. This year I stayed home and stayed busy with mundane things like painting the kitchen cabinets, working on a big dresser and entering data for my taxes. And it was okay. There was time for reflection and remembrance, time to communicate online with friends and by phone with a couple family members who thought to call. One day at a time, right? And yesterday was not a bad day in the end. I got through it, and this morning woke up cheerful and ready to move on.

So today it's back to mundane. I have no need to go out for the third day in a row. The cabinets got their final coat of paint this morning and await the polyurethane coating to protect them. Larry has finished the doors with new stain and polyurethane and I have new-to-us old white glass knobs for handles. We painted inside the cabinets and they look fresh and clean. Last week I painted the cabinets the same sage green I used on the inside, and guess what? I didn't like it! It looked too blah, somehow. So now I have painted them a deep red called Tuscan Red. It's one of the General Finishes paint colors. I really like General Finishes milk paints and have been using them almost exclusively. I tell you though, that green was good paint, whatever it was. I bought it at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Charleston and it was some of the best paint I have ever used. Two coats gave excellent coverage.

I decided to bake this morning to warm up the house. It was cold last night, down in the low teens and there is a chill in the air that makes it feel even colder than that. Since I had an open jar of applesauce and some raisins leftover from Christmas baking, I decided to make Applesauce Cake (my recipe is here), but to bake it in muffin tins. Two reasons for that: I love my old muffin tins' shape, and muffins give a controlled portion, unlike a cake where a piece can be as big as a person wants to cut it! (I was surprised when I linked the recipe to find I posted it on February 2, 2008, just two years to the day before I lost my son. Life has odd coincidences.)

It hit me as I finished making the muffins that I use pretty much all vintage kitchen tools these days. This morning for example I used  my old muffin tins, Pyrex bowl and measuring cup, aluminum measuring spoons, my mother's KitchenAid mixer, a red-handled dipper, and the recipe is kept with all my other favorites in an old photo holder. Then there is the Ball jar that held the applesauce, my little Hazel Atlas nut chopper I used for the walnuts, and of course my trusty Tappan range. Even the butter was melted in an old cast iron saucepan.

What is the pleasure of cooking with these old tools? Perhaps it is that they've stood the test of time and are still here, ready to work. There is comfort in holding a ladle that was held by cooks before me; perhaps some of them also experienced tragedy and loss and yet they too probably continued to cook, laugh and love.


Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Apple Thoughts

Of the many foods that we grow, apples have to be the most basic and most versatile of staples. How many other foods can you grow that can supply you with so many uses?

It begins with the blossoms, heavenly-scented and lovely  in the landscape or in flower arrangements. With the coming of summer the Lodi summer apples ripen and are ready to puree into tangy sauce. Apple cake, apple pie, apple cookies, apple bars, and apple candy are just a few of the sweet treats to be made with apples. They can be made into dumplings or added to pancakes. They can be jellied, jammed, candied, sauced, sliced, dried, fried, baked and broiled. Apples add flavor to stuffing, tartness to pork dishes, a sweet topping for chicken. I often make pickled crabapples, which are actually more candied than pickled, tasty and pretty as garnish on meats. Apples add crunch and flavor to salads and there is nothing quite as good as eating an apple straight from the tree.

Two of my favorite ways to use apples are old-time traditions—apple butter and apple cider. We get the cider press ready in September, gather jars and wash tubs and straining cloth and wait for a good day to get underway. Sometimes we put the cider in jugs and freeze it; if the freezer is full, I process the cider in jars and store it in the cellar. Both methods produce sweet, tangy juice that is as good with breakfast as orange juice, and a lot less expensive.

Apple butter requires a couple days’ work. My kettle is a 15-gallon one, so we only need about 3 or 4 bushels of apples to fill it. I cook the apples into sauce in the house first, as I was taught by my neighbor Belva. The next day we pour the sauce into the kettle and start the stirring down process, which usually takes about five hours. In the end we have thirty quarts of rich, spicy apple butter.

We all know an apple a day keeps the doctor away, but did you know that if you count the number of seeds in an apple you will know how many children you will have? Or that if you say the names of five or six people of the opposite sex as you twist an apple’s stem, the name you say as the stem breaks is the one you will marry? (None of these have been tested by me, so I can’t vouch for their accuracy!) You can also use the sprouts that you trim from the apple tree to make a pretty wreath. Hang it over your door for good luck.

If you have old apple trees on your property, consider this story before cutting them down:

There once was a farmer who had an apple tree in his field that had stopped bearing fruit. “Might as well cut it down,” the farmer said. “It’s only usefulness now is to heat our house this winter.”

“But it blooms so beautifully in the spring,” his wife protested. “And see how many birds nest in its branches? It makes a fine home for them. Just listen to their happy singing.”

“No, it only takes up space. I will cut it,” the farmer decided. He grabbed his axe and walked out to the tree. The birds continued to sing but the farmer paid no attention to them. He struck the tree with a mighty blow, then another. The axe bit into the center of the tree with the third swing, and out of the tree flowed golden honey, from a hive hidden in the tree’s hollow center.

“Why, this tree is full of bees and honey! I will not cut such a tree; it serves a worthy purpose.” From that day on, the farmer treated the old apple tree with respect, and took care of its health until the end of his days.

And then of course, there is the simplest use of apple trees of all--just climbing up them!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Afternoon Visitors

We've had a small herd of deer coming around all summer. Our dogs pay no attention to them; they don't even bark. Right now the deer are after the apples that are falling from the trees, and they've done a very good job of keeping the ground cleaned up, I must say. No worry about yellow jackets swarming around under the trees this year.

Yes, he's drooling as he eats that juicy, sweet apple!

Today our visitors arrived in mid-afternoon, sauntering down to the yellow apple tree to do their clean-up duty. They ignored me in the window, snapping their picture. I guess they knew I wasn't going to jump down on them.

We have had to wrap some young trees in gauze to keep the deer from eating them, and today Larry spread chicken wire on the ground under a tree of Arkansas Blacks to keep the deer from literally standing on two legs and pulling down the branches to get the apples. I've seen them do this, really I have. I don't mind sharing, but we seldom get any apples from this tree because of the deer so I am hoping we'll have some to store year, as the tree is loaded.

They are pretty, aren't they? Even when they're a pest, who can help seeing their beauty?

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Apple Time

Apples are everywhere this year, and they're big, juicy and ready to be put up right now. We've stowed 5 bushels in the cellar, made apple butter and applesauce and cider, so today we decided to put up some pie filling.

There are a couple ways to make your own pie filling; some people make it so that it can be canned and is very similar to the canned filling you can buy at the store.I prefer freezing it because at this time of year I'm tired of canning and usually out of jars and space in the cellar. If you want to try the canned version, here's one recipe that sounds good to me and doesn't require buying something called Clear Jel.

We brought out two tools I haven't used in quite a while: the apple peeler and the corer-slicer. I've had both of these since I was 22, and used them almost every year but then I bought a Squeezo to make my applesauce and my boys grew up and I was canning less. But with so many apples this year, I thought it was time to get the old tools out. And now that Larry has used them and fell in love with their simple mechanics, I would bet we'll be using them a lot more often.

Here's Larry peeling the apples

and here's he is coring and slicing

This tool did have another arm on it that was supposed to do the peeling but I much prefer the big peeler so I removed the peeling arm some time ago. I wonder where it is now? Hmmm...

We ended up doing about a bushel of apples in 2 hours, making 23 quarts of pie filling. The chickens were quite happy to get the peels; in past years I would boil them to get juice to make jelly, but we have no need of more jelly this year. The peels and cores could also be covered with water and left to make vinegar, something I've also done before.

To make the filling: I put the apples into lemon juice and water as I sliced them to keep the slices from turning brown. Then I drained them, added sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg (I measure nothing so I can't give amounts--I make sure the apples are coated with sugar; I judge the spices by the way the mixture looks). Then I bag up the mixture in quart bags and freeze. No cooking required! I've used this method several times in the past with good results, and it is very like the method recommended on the HGTV website.

Now, what to do with the rest of the apples? I think I might try drying some next week, and probably make some more pie filling because next year the crop might not be so abundant.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

An Apple Butter Kind of Day

Actually, it really wasn't. It rained. It poured. And then it rained some more. But thanks to a good neighbor, we were still able to make our apple butter with the loan of a canopy that worked nicely to keep us dry as we stirred.

We made our apple butter in steps. We made the sauce in advance, some last week and some 3 weeks ago, and put it in the freezer until we could get a date set for the cooking down. We settled on this Saturday and of course the rain moved in as soon as it heard the news. But with Pam's canopy and a little ingenuity we moved ahead.

The canopy covered our work area nicely. We worried about sparks possibly flying up from the wood fire and burning holes in the canopy so we set the cooking up outside of the shelter; we took the top plexiglas off a porch table and used the base to create a shelter over the kettle, sliding a piece of tin over the cooking sauce whenever the rain started up, and moving it aside as each shower passed by.

The fire gave us fits for a while; we had the wood covered but it still was not easy to get a good hot fire for a little while. We leaned some tin against the side of the kettle for a while and that seemed to help the fire get its breath, and then we were really cooking. Daughter-in-law Sandy washed jars and she and granddaughter Grace provided support while we stirred and stirred and stirred.

Each year the color of the sauce is different, depending on the apples we use. This year we had a good crop of Red Delicious, so we used those, some Rome and some Grimes Golden. The color is lovely, a nice reddish brown; and the flavor? Well, every year we think it's the best we've ever made, but this year's batch truly is delicious.

We started with 15 gallons of sauce. I follow the way my neighbor Belva Simons taught me and cook it down to about half of what we started with. We cook the sauce until it is boiling good and beginning to turn color; streaks of a dark gold will begin to appear and the boil cannot be stirred down. Then we add the sugar, slowly so that the sauce doesn't stop boiling. When all the sugar is in (20-25 pounds for my kettle, depending again on the apples and their sweetness), we continue cooking until the apple butter passes the "slump test." I don't know if that's the right term for it, but it describes what we're looking for very well--butter that does not weep and that holds its shape when a spoonful is placed on a plate. The whole cooking time is usually between 4 and 5 hours. (Add another 4-5 hours to make enough applesauce to fill the kettle).

When it was done I hurried inside to heat up the chili I'd made earlier and whip up a batch of cornbread. Fresh apple butter on biscuits is good; on cornbread it's ambrosia. While I did that, the men cleaned up the kettle and put away the tables, tin, and other things we used. Today we relaxed. Two of the guys played golf; grandchildren and Larry watched a movie and I did laundry and visited with my daughter-in-law.

The house is empty now; our company went home with apple butter, cider, eggs, gourds, butternut squash, apples, brownies and lots of hugs. I am washing up linens and towels and missing the sounds of their voices and laughter already.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.