a memory about apples and apple picking

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Apples! my kitchen, my house is filled with the aroma of apples. Each variety is slightly different, and when they meld together....WOW!!! i just love it.

Very much like when i was a kiddo, and there were bushels and bushes of different types of apples in the root cellar, the enclosed back porch, and perched on newspaper spread on ever surface in the spare room.  All grown in Grandpa and Grandma's orchard.  

Nearly 70 years later a few trees remain,  they don't produce alot of apples anymore. They are special apple trees to me.

By  extension each each old old apple tree in it's own way is important and special to me

 

The apples in my kitchen now were bought from an Amish farm  market. they are plump ,fragrant, beautiful and reasonably priced.   But they are not the gnarly old timers with their low water/moisture content and leathery skins, not  to mention their sundry flaws. like that touch of wild flavor. 

 

 

 

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So today is a  superb fall day! Puffy clouds, rustling leaves, a touch of coal smoke in the air!!!

Even though this year was not a good year for me, or the apples,  today is a very good day to pick apples.  Yes, to pick those apple that are all that remains of an old farmstead or logging camp or cow pasture, those tenacious apples, knurled, gnarled, bumpy and rough looking survivors of a time before i was born when there was a homestead or a farm there. Time has changed the appearance of those apples, and the land but it doesn't change the joy of biting into the sugary red fruit. 

The trees broken by the snow and wind, this years drought has taken it toll on all of the land, and  my hope is that they will still be there.   

  I would be remiss at the very least not to remind you to use tick repellent, Lyme's Disease is a bad thing, please don't learn that the hard way.

OK, i broke my own train of thought. OK, you might well ask why am I looking for abandoned apple trees, the simple answer is so i can make apple butter, lots and lots of apple butter.   We like our apple butter cooked down to a thickness close to tomato paste.  The average yield of a 1/2 bushel of apples {21 pounds} is roughly 9 pints , i usually get roughly  5 or 5 1/2 pints.  I just thin

 The house smells so very good, spicy and sweetly applely, wrapped in all the other comforting smells of Grandma's kitchen.  Has always been my feeling that those un-fool-ed around with apples not only taste of sunshine and blues skys, rain on a hot summer day, laughter of the children who had a swing in the tree, the pride of the a farm wife when she tasted her perseveres, the memories of elders who were "young at heart".

 

YES! these apples, but then I peel and core and chop them before they go into the big stainless steel pot!  Time was it was a huge almost cauldron like aluminum vessel, i have one stashed away somewhere. Never i did find a use for it again.

Will be coring and peeling and tossing them in that stainless steel pot. Adding some cider, sugar,some spices, alot of my attention. The apples will do the work, cooking down into a thick rich savory sauce. One January morning, if not before, we will be enjoying a bit of Fall and looking forward to Spring.

 

Oh, yes, no i don't have a recipie, seriously , i just wing it. Go by the aroma and the thickness of the apple butter.  My helpful hint{s}, use a stainless steel pot, fresh wooden spoon,and cook it low and slow.