Homesteader Life

Apples and pears will soon be ready. We always make lots of apple sauce every year and I like to can pears. I can hardly wait for the first pear pie of the season. I acquired a cider press this year and look forward to making some cider. Its a nice press, the only problem is that its missing the grinder. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to process large batches of apples for the press. I can’t afford the fancy grinding contraption and have to come up with a good old hillbilly alternative. I’m planing on making 5 gallons or so of Hard Cider to help get me through the winter. The other thing I need to give some thought to is what to do with the two orchards here. Both have been neglected for about 75 years or so and still produce fruit but can’t go on like this forever. Many apple trees are growing horizontally. The pear trees are in pretty good shape, they look good. The apple trees are all old varieties that I’d like to preserve. Guess I’m going to have to get a good book on grafting and slowly replace the old trees. We have quite a few cherry trees here too, but they don’t have the problems that the apple trees have. Next year we have to plant some more peach trees. We have one down by the folks house and got 70 some peaches of it this year. Peaches are selling for $48 a bushel around these parts! I figure peaches are becoming a rich mans fruit now, so I’ll plant a small grove up here. I love peaches but can’t see paying that kind of money for them. With a few more trees I could have all the canned peaches I want plus a few gallons of peach wine for those cold winter nights. These days I’m thinking that a good orchard ranks up with a hog as far as important things to have on the homestead.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 6:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.