Apple Days

My family loves apples. Apple pie, apple butter, apples for lunch, apples with pork, apples, apples, apples. Probably a good thing we live in Washington. Two out of the four of us could eat an apple every day. That is 730 apples a year just for those two and that isn't even counting the pies and apple sauce etc. So when we bought this house and I discovered an apple tree on the property I was pretty darn happy. Not just any dwarf apple tree. A real full sized, reach for the sky, I dare you to try to pick these apples way up here, type apple tree. Yes, it is about 20 to 25 feet tall so the job of picking those apples usually falls to one of the kids since they are part monkey anyway. That job had always been the oldest daughters job until this year when

she moved to the city to go to the University. Last year I had the fore site to buy an apple picker. At the time I thought $30 was a lot of money for a tool that only did one thing and only did it once a year. So far we have used it to hang and remove Christmas lights, pick apples, and goose the geese. Guess it was a good purchase. This year the youngest daughter and I picked the apples. I used the apple picker from the ground but she climbed the tree and the ladder to reach the apples higher up. We had a contest to see who could get the most apples in the basket without dropping one. Seven was the winning number. We also had some unexpected "help". As soon as the geese and ducks figured out we were picking apples they were right there to make sure they got their share. When all the apples were picked except the unreachable apples our youngest climbed up the tree as far as she could and shook the branches. My job was to beat the geese to the apples that fell to the ground and put them in a separate box for processing right away due to probable bruising and goose bites.

When one bird got an apple the rest would chase him/her to steal it away. Pretty comical.

 Lucy the Wanna Be Guardian Dog helped pick up apples too. When the apples were shaken from the tree she would run over and pick them up. There was never a tooth mark in any of them.

She catches on quick.

We got done picking just as dark clouds started to rolled in and there seemed to be a noticeable chill in the air and the sound of distant thunder. So we went down to put the chickens back in their run and get the hand truck to move the three large boxes of apples that we had picked.  BUT after we got the chickens in I thought it was a good idea to go get the rest of the lettuce out of the garden  BUT while we were in the garden I decided we should maybe thin the carrots a little. Much to my surprise this is what we got when we thinned them.

Fall planted carrots!

The clouds were getting more ominous so we headed back to get the hand truck and put the apples in the garage along with the ladder and the oh so helpful apple picker. I was thinking it was time for a hot chocolate break BUT then I noticed the recycling was building up in the mud room and since I had the attention of a very helpful girl we started loading that into the car and off we went to the recycling dump.

On the way back Old Man Winter decided to try and sneak in without anyone noticing. We saw it first on the windshield. That tell tale lacy splat of frozen rain also known as snow. The snow turned to hail and by the time we got home we had.....                       

THIS!

AND THIS!

So we finally had our hot chocolate. Then we made apple cider juice with my electric juicer out of the apples that we shook out of the tree.  Tomorrow we shall make the rest into apple butter.

Homestead Barn Hop