Saturday, June 20, 2015

Waste Not Want Not

Our neighbor's have an apple tree. They don't care about their apple tree, in that each year we have lived in this house, since we moved in July of 2002, most of the apples have rotted on the tree. Yes, I have gone over there in the middle of the night a picked a few apples over the years. The apples at the bottom of the tree that have fallen to the ground have made a great mess on our side of the 'property line' over the years. Well this year, there is a bumper crop of apples and I cannot see perfectly good food go to waste....so I asked Mr. G. (that's what I often call my husband) to go and talk to the neighbors and ask if we could harvest their apples. I even offered to bake them an apple crisp or apple pie of their choice. So we picked apples Sunday night. I took some apples to the office on Monday. I made a couple of apple crisps this morning, and now I am making apple jelly. I made jams with my mom as a kid, but as an adult, I have never canned anything. So this is all a new experiment for me. I am excited to be making jelly and cannot wait to try and make apple butter. Since Mr. G. and I are only two people, where is this surplus going to go? I plan to make and give away much of the jelly and apple butter. I will freeze some apples to make crisps and pies this winter and these are amazingly good eating apples. The land produces what we need, even in suburbia. Just imagine if everyone just grew one or two edible plants, we would be healthier and we would be more connected to nature and the world. Here's a picture of the first harvest of apples.

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