A Day or Two of Apples!

We have an espaliered apple tree that is a 'Liberty'. The espalier has come undone and we have a massive tree that is producing apples. The good news! The bad news is is that I have to catch them as The Herbal Husband cuts them on the neighbor's side. Their dogs barking fiercely. I should have taken a video! It was chaos! Here is the pile of pruning apple tree. It looks bad at the moment, but hopefully early in the spring while dormant, we can get the espalier back! Our other apple tree is supposed to be a 'dwarf Granny Smith' but it was a giant instead. The Herbal Husband commented that we needed to take that tree out! It is full of disease and bad insects and needs to be shaped dramatically and sprayed. As my extension agent has said to me, "A chainsaw at ground level is its only hope!" You know it's bad when an extension agent tells you that! She really likes both of us! Really!

These are the 'Liberty' apples. They look nice, don't they? Well, these are their good sides. It's all in the staging! They may have even looked better were they in a basket and not on top of the washer with a Marshall's bag as a background! The Herbal Husband was a huge help cutting out the bad parts and getting them cut to cook down.

I put water enough so that it wouldn't scorch. We had about four quarts of apples, maybe five. At least quartered, but there were many little pieces. I added 1 cup of sugar, 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of cinnamon. It's chunky applesauce! I canned it last night. The finished product is a little less chunky. My first attempt at applesauce a few years ago was too runny and watery. This time it looks like marshmallows in the applesauce! It tastes great though and that's what's important! That fourth jar is a little thin as far as being full, but we will enjoy it! Hope you are preserving your harvest wherever you may be!

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