A poem for Apple Day

Freshly picked apples in my trug
You can read the whole of Robert Frost's wonderful After Apple Picking here. 
I'm not quite as weary as Robert Frost's apple picker, but then I'm not doing it for a living. This year's crop is a good one, and now is the right time for picking most of them here at VP Gardens. It's the perfect way to celebrate today's Apple Day.

This year marks a change in how I'll use some of my harvest. The bulk is for eating fresh or squirreling away in the freezer to extend the time I can add chopped apple to my daily porridge. The difference lies in what I'll be doing with the remainder: in the past windfall cake and apple jelly were our staple fare, but now we're trying to reduce the amount of refined sugar in our diet.

As a result, a smart, shiny new juicer awaits these apples in my kitchen. I agonised for ages over whether to invest in this or a press. In the end I decided I'm not quite ready for a bulk approach to juicing, nor do I have the freezer space or bottles needed to store them. Smaller amounts freshly prepared to accompany our meals are sufficient for our needs... for now at least.

If you want to find an Apple Day celebration, then the People's Trust for Endangered Species' website has taken over the mantle pioneered by Common Ground. Their Apple Day section is the page you need, and their Traditional Orchard and Orchard Network campaigns have a wealth of useful information on all things apple.

Comments

  1. Sue Garrett21 October 2016 at 22:54

    We have had a very good apple harvest too. What's more we seem to use them in similar ways except we don't have a juicer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. VP22 October 2016 at 13:01

      It's the change in our diet and what to do with the surplus which led to my deciding to buy a juicer. We usually have some fruit juice with our Sunday roast, so it seemed a good way of providing something we enjoy already :)

      Delete
  2. Gwenfar's Garden22 October 2016 at 10:06

    I suspect Juicers are easier to clean than Presses. My experience at a community garden shows that, with large Presses at least, keeping them clean and free from mould, was a lot of work. Fresh apple juice from your juicer sounds wonderful

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. VP22 October 2016 at 13:09

      I thought they were about the same, until I realise you also need a scratter to help chop up the apples ready for a press. At that point I decided we didn't have enough room to store 2 pieces of kit, nor the space to store lots of bottles. Even the smallest press I've found, seems to be geared to more of a bulk approach to juicing and we're not quite at that place with our harvests, though that may change as our trees mature...

      Delete

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