We have twenty apple trees on our land – more if you count the wild ones found here and there down by the pond. I’m the official apple guy at our house. This includes mixing up a big batch of organic insect repellent
for the trees, picking up the fallen apples before the rot, harvesting the good ones and finally turning them into organic juice I freeze. (we can also safely pick, polish, and eat apples right off the tree worm and chemical-free)
These days, picking up fallen apples is hot work and I share the space with hundreds of bees. They don’t bother me too much. I pile the apples into the back of our John Deere Gator and haul them away where they can deteriorate uninterrupted. The bees follow the apples. Joy says when drive off with the apples piled high and a cloud of bees above the sweet, sticky fruit, it reminds her of cartoons she watched as a kid.
When the apples are ready to pick, I fill up the Gator again (this happens weekly Aug – Oct) and clean the fruit. Using an old-fashioned apple press, I “juice” the apples, strain the juice, and fill up one gallon jugs with juice. We have three freezers we use just for juice.
I don’t separate the different kinds of apples. Instead, I crush whatever is ripe at the time. This results in many different flavors of juice.
Some of the apples are almost ready for the first batch of this season. The crop is abundant and I’m going to busy. When winter comes and the squirrels and blue jays are feasting on the few frozen apples still on the trees,
I’ll be inside enjoying the fruits of the trees labor and mine. That makes the sweat and a bee sting now and then worth it.
Jon
