To The Apple Orchard We Go Because It's Apple Harvest Time in Canada

rebeccaryan (69)in #homesteading • 7 years ago

The orchard is pretty dry this time of year so you won't need your rubber boots but you will need a couple of big bags because we're picking kale and apples today.

When produce is ready to be harvested it is a fantastic time to buy it locally (if you aren't currently growing it yourself on your own land). If growing conditions have been "good", harvest-time usually means abundance and very competitive prices, especially if you are buying in bulk.

My country (which is Canada) has four true seasons

At the end of September, we are just starting to enter into our Autumn season. Final harvests will take place in less than a month and then everything will plunge into a deep freeze and remain frozen solid from December until the beginning of April. It's long and it's damn cold. Every single one of us gets cabin-fever. (I don't care who you are, every Canadian gets it because we just don't get enough sun for 4 months and it's so cold that any of your exposed skin hurts when you go outside.)

A Canadian will do whatever they can to preserve Summer for as long as they can

For myself and my family, this means preserving food at its peak so that it can be enjoyed in the middle of February. (February is just about the time that we are all ready to strangle each other and delicious food helps to take the edge off. LOL!)

At any rate, the kale will be consumed fresh, but the apples will be dehydrated. I will also be making some apple sauce and pressure canning it. In total, I plan to preserve and store approximately 100 lbs of apples for our upcoming winter season.

This is what a mature apple orchard looks like. Row after row of small trees bearing a round, red fruit that has tangy, sweet flesh. Apples (when they are fresh) should be crunchy when you bite into them.

(Doesn't that just make you want to eat an apple right now?)

The apple tree on the left is a younger tree that is approximately 3 years old. The larger tree on the right is over 10 years old.

In between the rows of apple trees is a planting of really nice kale. Kale is a cruciferous vegetable that is loaded with sulfur. Sulfur is critical for the structural integrity of the skin and for healthy ligaments and fascia. Kale is also beneficial in counteracting harmful toxins and gut bacteria.

@knarly327 and I eat apples and kale almost everyday. Kale is very cold-hardy. As a result it is one of the first leafy vegetables that is ready to harvest in the early Spring and will keep producing into the very late Autumn. (Yeah, it's that resilient and as a result, I generally think that it should be planted in everyone's garden, as long as they have a "cooler" climate.

With the produce picked, the process of preserving the apples starts with an "apple-peeler-corer-slicer".

This gadget was one of the first appliances to offer convenience in the early 18th century kitchen. The design hasn't changed much in 200 years. It doesn't require electricity to run and is a handy tool because it does exactly what its name implies. It peels, cores, then slices an apple with just a few easy turns of the hand crank.

Once in slices, the apples are ready for dehydrating. In the 18th century kitchen, the apple rings were simply hung on a line of string to dry. We can still use this method or we can use an electric dehydrator, which is what I do. The dehydration process of apple rings in a dehydrator takes 24 hours. Once the rings are dried, they can be stored in large, sealed freezer bags indefinitely.