An Early Harvest

Its looking like October around here. We harvested some of the winter squash and have begun planting favas, potatoes, pole beans, lettuce, and all sorts of brassicas (we snuck in a little more corn too). This being our first season of planting winter squash at this location, I started all the pumpkins, banana squash, kabocha, and butternut in early march. Seeing that most were ready to harvest at the end of July, I think we could have even planted two consecutive crops.

Our Gravenstein apple tree is laden with fruit and has started dropping apples. We have just been collecting the fruit off of the ground but yesterday I gave her a couple of good shakes and this was the result.

We are canning quart after quart of apple sauce and apple butter. I dont add much to the apples just wash, cut, (I leave the skins on) and cook them down in a little water, my favorite secret ingredient being organic brown rice syrup and maybe a bit of cinnamon. I recently discovered Sorghum molasses which I find to be very tasty (and much cheaper than other natural sweeteners).

Of course you can just process the apples plain, they are delicious that way too. Another great tip that a friend taught me is when making an apple pie or crisp, pour a generous amount of homemade apple sauce or apple butter over the apple slices before adding the topping/crust. The result is 100% yummier and very moist.

Much of the rest of the fruit here is still growing and ripening. Here are some images of what we are looking forward to...?