Be Ye Separate

An Apple a Day!

Blessings!

   You've heard that saying, An apple a day keeps the....? Well, unfortunately here at Heavenly Acres Homestead, it doesn't keep the worms away:(

   We've been waiting and waiting for the apples to finally be ready for picking. Literally thousands of apples just waiting to be made into sauces, spreads and pie fillings:) We were so excited.

   Today was the day! We were going to be pulling those lucious, ripe wonderful fruits down and getting them ready to be made into our favorite fruit preserves. We were looking forward to humdreds of quarts of apple sauce, apple butter, pie fillings, chutneys etc.

   Standing below the trees and pointing and calculating getting them down, bagged for quick future use etc. I pulled the first one down. I seem alright and I squeezed it (like you always squeeze a fruite to see it's lovely firmness) and it split wide open! The outside of it about 1/2 an inch of firm fruit but the rest of the inside was literally dark brown and black! It smelled just awful!

   I pulled another. Same thing! Then another and another! We have no idea what is wrong but these apples, every singe one of them, is rotted from the inside while still on the tree looking every bit as pretty as a healthy apple on the outside! Soooo disappointing:(

   Tomorrow I'll be taking a couple of the apples and a small branch and some leaves to the extension office and asking them to identify it for us. Then asking them what we can do about it for next years crop. Because as of right now, we have absolutely NOTHING to can from those trees:(

   We'll be paying attention to the papers in the area though asking for gleaners to come grab what's left on their apple and other fruit trees. It's a common practice here. In fact, once we had used up all the apples we could possile use here we would put an ad in the paper ourselves asking anyone who wanted apples to come get them. It's easier than letting them go to waste and watching them rot.

   We still have plenty of blueberries to can up and we'll be picking blackberries to fill up the missing apples:( I'm so sad about it. I had such plans and it is not to be. Oh well, such is life:) We'll figure out what is wrong and see if it can be fixed with perhaps good pruning, vitamins, pesticides? Whatever it takes to bring those trees back to a healthy state.

   We also discovered that our pear tree is finally producing and the fruit seems very healthy so this is a blessing for sure:) We've pulled several down and though they are not quite ripe we'll ripen them in the paper sack on the table for a few days:) We did cut one open to be sure we weren't looking at the same issue as the apples.

   On the bright side too, we discovered that the apple rake picks up the hazelnuts like a charm:) Those are tough to pick up on  your knees for sure:) We have bags and bags of those:) Not sure what we'll do with them just yet but in the meantime everyone likes cracking them open and eating them:)

   Well, I best get down to writing the ad for the auction on our goats:) It's time to get those babies sent down the road to someone elses greener pastures:) Have a very blessed weekend!

God be with thee!

Sister Lori

Untitled Comment

{ 18:41, Friday, September 19, 2008 } { Posted by Kitty }

We have several fruit trees here too. Our peach and plum trees produce some beautiful fruit but they also have worm problems. We have yet to eat a good fruit from either tree. Our pear tree made lots of pears, but none ever turned soft enough to peal and/or eat. They went from too hard to mush, never perfect. The tree ended up knocked down in the storm. Now our orange trees produce some of the most sweetest fruit ever. So that's a blessing anyway. Sorry to hear about the waste...........Kitty

Hi Lori...

{ 12:18, Friday, September 26, 2008 } { Posted by Mennobrarian }

The unmentionables bag you've been using as a salad thing? Mine is used for curing nuts right now. What's that saying about great minds thinking alike? :-) Many blessing to you!