Shrunken Apples

This phenomenon frequently puzzles me!

• Why do these apples stay on the tree through the winter?
• Why don't the birds eat them?
• What happens to them when the new blossoms pop out? (I never see them on the ground)

By this time of year they've got to be pretty *ripe*, if you know what I mean.

Apricot Jam

I did a post about apricot jam back in 2008 but I decided that it was time for another one.



My friend, Sheri, calls this *Sunshine in a Jar*! And she's right! I love the warm, sunny color of apricot jam. I have 12 glorious, golden pints of goodness on my counter cooling right now. And the up side to my apricot jam recipe? The foam that is skimmed off during the cooking process becomes an additional pint of apricot syrup! Yummy!

Laster-evening Gordon and I pick what remained on the tree of the apricots. Since we live in a canyon we get some healthy wind here and have LOTS of windfall fruit. I've collected 6 grocery bags full of apricots and apples this week. All told we ended up with 3- 3 gallon [BYU ice cream] buckets of apricots. I don't know how to quantify that with the only previous crop because I discovered the wonder of BYU buckets since our last in 2008.



We always share our fruit with the Orem-variety of fruit-bats (2 families now!) and the neighbors. I'm thinking that if hard times come, and we know they eventually will, some apricot jam ought to liven up our food storage fair considerably.

So for this year... I will continue to be the little Grammie-jammie-maker.

Christmas Apples

Back in the day... we always got an apple and an orange along with nuts in our Christmas stocking. (Random fact... it has nothing to do with this post, but I thought about it just now as I titled this post.)

Now for the real post-

I suppose phenomenon of apple-ornaments has occurred other years and I just haven't noticed it but this year I'm noticing all of the apples still hanging, just like festive ornaments, on the trees (which is interesting, since if I don't spray my apple tree I don't have ANY apples on it by the time they should be ripe... am I babbling?)

I think they look so beautiful...



Yesterday and today have been wonderful sunshiny days, for which I am very grateful after a couple of weeks of fog.  I was able to capture these natural ornaments with a beautiful cerulean background.



The thing I want to know is this-

• Why don't the birds eat these? 
• Are they fermented? 
• Are they frozen? 
• Just not tasty enough? (The birds always want to eat MY apples!)

This is a different tree... a crab apple.  It lives across the street from the other apple trees.



These two trees are in my neighborhood, but I've seen these apple-ornaments on apple trees all over town.  Do you have any apple-ornaments where you live?

285- Picturesque Pear

I picked my apples and some of the pears on Saturday. Oh My! do they ever smell and taste wonderful.

I just loved the shape of this little girl pear... isn't she pretty?

273- Totally Cracked

This has been such an odd season! We had a long cool spring and now we are having record high temperatures in September! Makes me feel totally cracked... just like my tomatoes.

Why do they do this anyway?

267- A Pear [of]Triplets

Yes, I know... that really doesn't even make sense!  Perhaps that's why I like it so much!

I was lying on the couch in the family room talking to Gordon, the sun was starting to get low in the western sky but all I could see was the *pear triplets* in that glorious, golden pre-sunset light! 

Be still my heart...ooooh, I just love it!

I said, "Gordon, there are pears I HAVE to take a picture of!"  His response... better hurry!  What a guy!

257- Raisin Making 101

Each year I've tried to figure out what to do with the plethora of grapes my vines produce.  I've tried-

• Raisins the hard way (blanch them first) then use a dehydrator (borrowed).  They were tart and not so tasty.
• Grape juice (it looks like green pea soup... I'm not joking!  Come look in my fruit dungeon!)
• Sun-dried raisins (yeah that lasted 24 hours and they got rained on!)
• Raisins done in the dehydrator, sweet product, yummy results!  Eureka!

Last year I bought a second dehydrator after my sun-dried raisin experiment failed so I could deal with the mountain of grapes I dragged in of my deck. (Click on the grapes label if you want to read all the drama!)

I love raisins!  I love them in cinnamon rolls, but mostly I love them in my morning oatmeal!  Sad... I ran out of home-made raisins about 6 months ago.

So this year I was all ready to really go to town and put in my year's supply of raisins!  I started by picking a googlin of grapes (to be more specific 9 buckets full, of which I've given 2 buckets full away, bucket and all.)

I do my very scientific wash consisting of: filling my big kitchen sink full of water, dump in one bucket of grapes, agitate gently, carefully remove to extra large colander while sorting out leaves and stowaway insects.

Of course then all those happy little *bobbers* have to be removed from the stems. Yes, it is mindless work, but that's ok... I can be mindless especially if Gordon helps or I have something to listen to on my MP3 player. Then you put them on the dehydrator racks.



But here is what I wish I'd known before I bought my second dehydrator... dehydrators are not all created equal! This is the Nesco FD60 and the air circulates down the sides and it is 500 watts.  I have even drying and a batch takes a little less than 24 hours.



This one is the Nesco FD35 and it blows the air down the middle. It tends to dry unevenly getting the ones in the middle crispy and the ones on the outside still not totally raisin-ified.



After about 24 hours this is what you will have... yummy raisins! I spread them on my large cookie sheet to cool and let them air dry for an unspecified amount of time.



Then I package them in 1-gallon Ziploc bags for storage. I stored them in the freezer last year until I needed to refill my raisin canister just to make sure that all my hard work stayed good.  I think I'm about half way through my plan... bet you know what I'll be doing every day this week!

256- Grape Tendril

I started my grape harvest on Saturday. It took me a minute to remember that, this time of year the days start to run together. We picked 5 3-gallon buckets of grapes; all of which have been given away, devoured or turned into raisins. And that 5 buckets barely scratched the surface.



So today found me out there again in need of a machete! Those vines are crazy! I trimmed some of them so I could get to the grapes from the sidewalk side of the fence. I will wait until early spring to trim the inside. Can you believe that this little stretch of grape vines is so prolific?



What a blessing to have fresh garden produce to share! Can't you just taste the sweetness of these lovelies?

254- Drive-by Fruiting

I never cease to be amazed at the bounty that my little scant quarter acre of land produces!

Of course, this is harvest time and my favorite thing to do is share my bounty with others. Some years we have more than others but even in the *lean* years we have way too much for just the two of us.

So today I called Kevin-Kay's folks to see if they wanted some peaches. Then I made up *drive-by fruiting* boxes for our kids in Orem. I knew that Doug's family has a plethora of peaches so I took them a 3-gallon BYU Creamery ice cream bucket filled with grapes. The boxes went to Camille and Kevin and Desi and Alex.