My neighbor, Paul B. has lent me his antique family apple press and in these photos is assisting me in the old fashion fall ritual of turning dropped apples into fresh cider. In this first session the yield for three hours of work on a Sunday afternoon was five gallons of cider. We have since done it again and ended up with six gallons! Some of it has been processed in the canner and now there are twenty-two quarts of cider on the shelves along with the other jars of things. The fresh cider can last nearly three weeks though and is delicious. I am sure the compost pile will benefit from the mash left after the pressing and bees love it too.
It is definitely fall now and the nights are cool even if no serious frost yet. The wood stove is in use each night and a wood pile has been stacked on the deck for easy access.
I recently noticed many, many small asparagus shoots growing the the garden paths surrounding the original asparagus bed in the Raised Bed Garden and decided to make a new bed in the Field Garden from them. To my great surprise I suddenly had 110 new plants to contend with! I made a new bed but could only use about 70 of the plants so am trying to find a home for the remaining plants.
The harvested items on the front porch give you a sampling of the bounty this year. I am still serving any dinner guests many fresh salads, cooked veggies and fresh fruit as well as enjoying it all myself. The canning jar total now stands at 370 with the addition of the apple cider and also the first batches of canned pear halves and pear jam from the pear tree. Pears take a few weeks to complete the ripening process after picking so there is more canning action to come. The pear tree is the first of the six dwarf fruit trees to produce a crop. I also plan to use some of the nicest dropped apples to make some apple butter. I make it in my crock pot and cook it all night. (All the apples I used for the cider and will use for apple butter come from the neighbor's old apple trees as my apple trees have not produced a crop yet.)
I am sure I will set a record of over 400 jars of items this spectacular gardening year. I have done well selling some of it to Union Church friends and Saco Bay Garden Club members in addition to giving many jars to family and friends. I look forward to the trips to the basement all winter long to grab a jar of jam, salsa, pickles, juice and pasta sauce.
The only other fall planting to be done is the mid-October planting of garlic. The task was accomplished yesterday and I put in 187 individual cloves of the stuff. I decided to increase my annual supply. My yield for this year was 116 heads of garlic. Since it was such a productive year of canning of salsa, a lot of garlic was used in that process. This led my to determine I needed a bigger yield in the future, hence the increased planting for 2011.
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