Friday, September 11, 2015

Apple Harvest

One of the things we were most excited about in our new house was the orchard! 

When first looked at the house, we knew it had 3 apples trees (who knows what kind?), 3 plum trees, and 2 pie cherry trees. 

Then, before we even moved in we planted more! 
Costco was having a killer deal on fruit trees, so for $11 each we picked up a Honeycrisp apple tree, 2 different pear trees, a peach tree, and a nectarine tree. 

So, yeah, it's a good thing we like fruit and picking fruit and processing fruit and eating fruit and....

 We had lots of fun with our cherry trees!
I made some might delicious cherry jam, cherry-almond jam, cherry pie, dried cherries, cherry fruit leather, cherry foccacia, and chocolate cherry ice cream. SO good! 
I was so wrapped up in cherries that I forgot to take pictures. ;)

Well, more recently we harvested all our apples, but I didn't forget to take pictures of that. 
We husband's family came over, and it was quite the event!

I wish I knew how many pounds we picked! Alls I know is that we filled up lots and lots of garbage cans full of them.

And alas, these apple trees have not been taken care of for years--no pruning, picking, treating, etc. so we had loads of tiny little wormy apples!

We are planning on pruning, picking and treating our apples so that in the future, we get nice, big apples that are not so wormy. 

I spent a lot of time picking yucky apples off the ground while everyone else picked the good ones, so I saw a lot of views like these ones--of everyone's feet. 

These feet happen to be my husband's. :)

One of our plum trees was also ready to harvest this day, so we picked all of them too!

It was a fun day. 
It was the type of day that I like to have and that I want our lives to be like--happy family time, working together, laughing and enjoying ourselves. Bringing the harvest in, snitching apples as we please. I like the simplicity of it all--picking food so we can eat and enjoy it. Is there much that is more simple, more basic to life than gathering food?
I'm so thankful for our little orchard and for the years of memories it will bring us!


  1. There's a pretty good chance you should build a cider press. And then you should probably carbonate, bottle, and pasteurize it and save it for special occasions... just sayin'. Otherwise, I hope you like applesauce, dried apples, home canned apple pie filling, apple butter, and the like.

  2. So I know how you feel! We have slowly been discovering all the fruits that are growing on our lot. We have 3 different kinds of grapes, raspberries, an apple tree, an Italian Prune plum tree, 5 hazelnut trees, one tiny strawberry patch, a very young cherry tree, and our neighbor has a pear tree that overhangs into our yard and they told us to take what we can. We're doing grapes, plums, and pears, as the rest of the fruit hasn't produced well due to overgrowth or wrong season. But we're in it over our heads. I even made grape pie! Who ever heard of grape pie? It's delicious, though. But we've done jams, dried, leathers, juice, pie, sorbet. Planning on some sauces. Wish we could come help and taste! You're welcome to try ours when you come visit! ;) Very excited for you and this exciting new life.

    1. Hey! I was thinking of you last night because I made the most scrumptious roasted plum and cardamom ice cream. So Good! I used plums from our Italian Prune plum tree, so sounds like something you could totally make and enjoy. I'll make a post for it sometime next week--you could google the recipe though. Hazelnut trees??? that's fun and different. I've been thinking of planting some grapes, so you'll have to let me know how you enjoy them. I also just planted some yummy white raspberries. :) so fun! and so busy this time of year. :) I do hope we can come visit and see your place someday. :) Good to hear from you!


