Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Discussions of fruits, veggies and grains other then just mashing

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cranky
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by cranky »

I am a very busy person lately :? Working on the house, yard, truck, Buicedes, blueberries, blackberries and other stuff. I really don't have time for apples but I need them to test modifications and improvements so I need to pick more apples. Which didn't happen today, I hope to make that happen tomorrow.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Another crazy day in my little world :crazy: The temperatures in the afternoons are pushing 90 but I was bound and determined to pick this afternoon. Fortunately I get off work at 1:30 and it was only 80f but on my way home I drove by an old lady lying at the side of the road :esurprised: . So I pulled over to see if she was OK, she wasn't :( Another guy pulled over to help as well and a couple ladies walking by did as well. She had apparently fallen while crossing the street and hit her head on the curb. I called 911 while the ladies held her hand and talked to her until the ambulance arrived. after the ambulance arrived and it was obvious she was getting the help she needed and I could do no more I got in my truck and headed for home.

Once home I quickly changed grabbed my picker and headed out to pick. When I got there I set about picking. I got another entire bucket full without using the ladder but that was it. I then set the ladder up and started on round 2. I picked for an hour and was just starting on my 8th bucket when my timer went off so I went ahead and finished that one then cleaned up and went over to see if the Vista Bella was ready. It is but people are parking underneath it so it is difficult to pick. They really are some beautiful apples so I had to pick a dozen or so, they are the red ones in this picture
BYT 23 JUL 18 #3 - C.jpg
As far as whats left on the tree the part I didn't pick still looks like this
BYT 23 JUL 18 #1 - C.jpg
I figure there is probably still 200 pounds on each tree but I only have fermenting space for 29 more gallons and figure I got another 180+ pounds off the tree today which gives me right at 360#s. This should come to around 23 more gallons but the last time I got exactly 29 gallons so I am thinking about being cautious because my local hardware stores don't have any lids for buckets and I seem to be out of air locks :roll: Gonna have to see what I can come up with before I press.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by cranky »

I was just sitting here showing my wife one of the Vista Bellas
VISTA BELLA #1 - C.jpg
and it occurred to me I had seen that apple before
apple reaper - C.JPG
I'm pretty sure I posted that a couple years ago thinking about painting that on the tailgate of my truck :D
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by distiller_dresden »

Ideal apple, what do they taste like Cranky? As a real food person and loving fruit knowing there are 100s of apples I've not tried always sucks
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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distiller_dresden wrote:Ideal apple, what do they taste like Cranky? As a real food person and loving fruit knowing there are 100s of apples I've not tried always sucks
Since there are over 7,000 listed varieties of apples I think it's safe to say most people will not have tasted most of them, after all most stores have something like 5 varieties in stock and a lot of them like the Vista Bella don't keep, although the VB is probably the worst one about it.

Here is an excerpt from a tasting not I found on it
wrote:For such an early variety the flavour is remarkably good, with a distinctly fruity taste reminiscent of slightly under-ripe raspberries. The flesh is light and juicy, and this apple is very easy and enjoyable to eat. If you have been surviving on old supermarket apples stored from the previous season, then Vista Bella is a revelation, with its full-on taste of the summer.
Fresh it is a very sharp apple, with a slap you in the face APPLE!!! flavor. They are nice and crisp with bright white flesh with red veining. One year my wife made apple sauce with them and it turned out so bright red that your brain said it should taste like cinnamon red hots so your brain didn't know what to do when it hit you with that seriously sharp apple flavor. My wife didn't like it, but they really work well in cider and brandy. I think they would be a very good stand alone apple for brandy. The flavor and crispness deteriorates quickly after picking and I've lost an entire batch of them in a week. I think they would make very good pie apples if the pie is made the day they are picked.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Today was blueberry day for us :) We got up before the sun and headed out to the park to get the picking done before it got too hot. There might have been one other person there when we got there but we didn't see them, we had the whole park to ourselves. The bushes have begun producing very well so the picking was easy. We picked til we were tired and sore than came home and took a nap. Here is what we got
BLUEBERRIES 24 JUL 18 #3 - C.jpg
That's about a gallon and a half :)

With the blackberries producing as well and the cherries we have put back it's almost time to put up this years jelly. We have only one jar of cherry preserves left from last year so we cut things kind of close last year. This year we hope to get enough to send out at Christmas.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Shine0n »

My goodness, our apples are not close to being ready, I haven't put the refractometer in play yet but they just aren't ready.
I did find 2 crabapple trees near by so I may pick some and freeze to add to the fuji and golden delicious and pear in due time.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Shine0n wrote:My goodness, our apples are not close to being ready, I haven't put the refractometer in play yet but they just aren't ready.
I did find 2 crabapple trees near by so I may pick some and freeze to add to the fuji and golden delicious and pear in due time.
People tell me all the time they never heard of apples that are ripe in July. Early apples tend to not be commercially viable because they don't keep well. Golden Delicious should be coming in soon.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Today is apple day again as well as kitchen day. Working on the kitchen while pressing. I managed to find another carboy in the attic. It's a good thing too because I am already at capacity. I racked 12 gallons into my big carboy and topped off three 5 gallons and a 6 gallon that I had left a gallon low. This freed up 4 carboys, with the one in the attic making 5 plus the 2 that were still on the shelf, that's 7. I'm out of stoppers and air locks but just ordered a couple more. In the mean time I'm going to use a paper towel and rubber bands. $ gallons in each carboy plus one more gallon in a bucket brings the grand total for today to another 29 gallons :ebiggrin:
PRESS 25 JUL 18 #3 - C.jpg
BYT CIDER 25 JUL 18 #3 - C.jpg
TRANSPARENT 25 JUL 18 - C.jpg

MRS Cranky and I took some video and I hope to have that up soon.

Total apples pressed somewhere between 720 - 760 pounds off 2 trees yielding a total of 58 gallons of juice. Total time spent picking = 5hr. Total time chopping = maybe an hour, total time pressing 2 days ( probably figure 16hr, maybe a little less) I could press faster if I was willing to leave some behind but I press the hell out of it and get just about everything it has to give. I keep thinking "with another hour of picking and a few more hours of processing I could beat my record of 71 gallons, or at least get to 60" but in truth I just don't have the time even though it really would be simple.

With that at 5:05 Pacific daylight time on July 25th 2018 I officially announce the end of Cranky's apple season.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by ShineonCrazyDiamond »

Liar...
"Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond."
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:Liar...
It's true, I am done, the kitchen, bathroom and infinite porch are going to finally be finished this year. I never intended to pick what I did. I only planned on pressing maybe 20 gallons to cover my needs for apple cider for cooking and some to give the homeowner but the trees were so loaded it was too easy to pick 360 LBS off the transparent. Then when the homeowner thanks you for doing it you kind of feel obligated to finish the favor and not leave him with a yard full of rotting apples. Then I had to pick an equal amount off the back yard tree because transparents aren't stand alone and there is that whole helping out the owner. I feel bad that I don't have time to help out the blind guy by picking that tree but I just don't have the time. I am actually truly done with apples this year, except for maybe pie filling and apple butter.

If I were to pick any more it would start as "I'll just pick enough to get 2 gallons to get to 60 gallons" but that wouldn't happened. I would wind up with 10 gallons which would get me to 68-70. Then I'd say "just 2 more gallons and I will set a new record". That would turn into 75 or 80 gallons and I would wind up having to try for an even 100. Given I could probably get another 30 gallons of juice off the 2 trees I've been picking and figuring how loaded the trees are this year and 2 other people want me to pick their trees it would be extremely easy to get to that 100 gallons this year but it's just not going to happen.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by ShineonCrazyDiamond »

I'll wait.

Not even Fall yet.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by ShineonCrazyDiamond »

cranky wrote:Well here it is
FIRST APPLE [b]24 JULY 17[/b] - C.jpg
The first fully ripe apple of 2017 :ebiggrin:

So on July 24th Cranky's apple season has officially begun.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Wow, the transparents were really running late last year, I would have lost most of them if I waited til now to pick them. Reading through it looks like everything was running late.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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I was out in my garage a few minutes ago and found myself near my barrel so I decided to go ahead and check on it. I knocked out the bung and dipped my finger in. I'm happy to say I can still touch it with my finger so losses so far haven't been too bad. I then decided to use my stainless steel racking cane as a thief and take out a bit. I haven't tasted this in quite some time, I think possibly since I originally closed it up last Dec but may have tried some a few months ago.
AB 26 JUL 18 #2 - C.jpg
It hasn't really developed much color, which is actually not a bad thing given I have worked hard to it from tasting like whiskey and the barrel is well used. The color is a nice bright amber. I may see about taking half and putting it on lightly used oak but I'm not really sure I want to do that.

As for flavor, well first there is bouquet It smells nicely of pears, I really like that, I think I only had about 10% pear in there but it really comes out in the bouquet. The flavor is strangely sweet. I don't know where that came from, maybe the Japanese maple bung, wherever it came from it is rather nice. Flavor has developed nicely, not quite as forward as I might like but very nicely of apples and pears. Pretty much everything I was hoping for. I don't plan on removing it from the barrel for another 4 months but I would be more than happy with it right now. When I run off this latest batch of apple in a few months, I'm considering removing only what will be replaced by the newest run and leaving the rest in there to develop along with the fresh batch. That way the barrel stays in constant use and the brandy will constantly be topped up.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:
cranky wrote:Well here it is
FIRST APPLE [b]24 JULY 17[/b] - C.jpg
The first fully ripe apple of 2017 :ebiggrin:

So on July 24th Cranky's apple season has officially begun.
Let's see, that would be January here.

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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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cranky wrote:When I run off this latest batch of apple in a few months, I'm considering removing only what will be replaced by the newest run and leaving the rest in there to develop along with the fresh batch. That way the barrel stays in constant use and the brandy will constantly be topped up.
Cranky, you should DEFINITELY begin an apple brandy solera. Oh my GAWD...

I only pray to be a beneficiary of such nectar.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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distiller_dresden wrote:
cranky wrote:When I run off this latest batch of apple in a few months, I'm considering removing only what will be replaced by the newest run and leaving the rest in there to develop along with the fresh batch. That way the barrel stays in constant use and the brandy will constantly be topped up.
Cranky, you should DEFINITELY begin an apple brandy solera. Oh my GAWD...

I only pray to be a beneficiary of such nectar.
We will have to see where I stand when bottling time comes. I keep a list of people who need a bottle in my head...the only problem is I have a bad memory :crazy:
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by distiller_dresden »

I can remind you time to time if its not obnoxious...

Please DO document the solera though!
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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distiller_dresden wrote:Please DO document the solera though!
i wouldn't actually call it a solera, it's only one barrel so it would really be the unpredictable "special" cousin of the solera known as an infinite barrel and it will most likely be documented here :D
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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A couple days ago I was driving my usual route home and looked over and saw this
CHURCH TREE 29 JUL 18 #1 - C.jpg
Which surprised me.

The reason it surprised me was there hasn't been an apple tree here for years and even then it was a crab apple tree.

Maybe I should give a little background here.

When I first began picking apples there was a crabapple tree that I once stopped and picked a bucket of crabs off of and used in my first batch. They were small apples about the size of walnuts or maybe chicken eggs and were far too much work to deal with at the time. Then one year it vanished and appeared to have been somehow replaced by a mature maple tree which seemingly had always been there.

:crazy: crazy I know but that's how it looked. I've often wondered what happened to the crab apple tree and often looked at the maple that was now where it had once stood. That's why I noticed this the other day. So I pulled over for a closer look.
CHURCH TREE 29 JUL 18 #3 - C.jpg
I don't know if someone cut down the crab and it is trying to grow back or if someone planted a different tree here or if something else is going on but I can tell you one thing
CHURCH TREE 29 JUL 18 #4 - C.jpg
Them ain't no crab apples, those are full size apples completely different from what the missing tree produced. They look like they will be good cooking apples, so they may become pies or apple butter but it's a nice little find.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Yesterday on my way home I stopped and picked a few apples
APPLES 04 AUG 18 - C.jpg
Before you say anything about me calling an end to apple season, these are intended for pie filling and apple butter, not brandy. I was at the store and saw granny smiths at $1.50 a LBS and just couldn't help myself. This tree is right on the way home and ready to be picked and we need apples for pie filling and our annual apple butter and it only took a few minutes. These apples are running 100 to a bucket which are pretty darned big apples. I am probably going to pick more as well because my wife has been known to use 3 buckets full at a time and we plan on sending some out at Christmas.

All that said one of the people I loaned fermenting equipment to brought it back yesterday, so I have the ability to ferment another 25 gallons or so :think:

Today my pots arrived and it's been 3 weeks since I started my little rooting project so I figured it was time to start moving them to their individual pots and letting them live outside. So here are some pictures of the first graduating class of Karen's Delights.
KD STARTS 05 AUG 18 #1 - C.jpg
This is what they looked like when I opened the first bag.

You may think that looks bad but what I see is this
KD STARTS 05 AUG 18 #2 - C.jpg
KD STARTS 05 AUG 18 #4 - C.jpg
Nearly every stick has signs of producing new growth :D

So now the first group is moved to their new pots 36 in all
KD STARTS 05 AUG 18 #5 - C.jpg
I'll try to get to the rest over my weekend.

I'm still cautiously optimistic that I will have at least some success and to celebrate this little milestone I'm cracking open one of the last 2 bottles of iced apple made from 100% KD apples.
ICED APPLE #1 - C.jpg
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Today I picked another bucket of apples. I also told my wife about the 2.5 buckets to make apple butter out of. She actually wants to make apple jelly this year which is a little more complicated. It requires juicing the apples and clarifying the juice, maybe even some freeze concentration but I'm concerned that these apples may be too acidic to do that.

When I got home I went out to check on and water my baby trees and noticed the Hazen has started dropping apples. So I picked a few up off the ground and checked the rest to see if they were ready to fall off. In all I got 8 that fell off with a light wiggle.
HAZEN 06 AUG 18 #1 - C.jpg
HAZEN 06 AUG 18 #3 - C.jpg
They seem to be a bit different this year, they are quite sharp tasting and a bit more acidic than previous apples off this tree. They will get added to the apple butter, jelly and pie filling but I now have a fairly big problem. The press is now so large it really requires a minimum of 4 buckets of apples to fill enough to press properly and I only have 2.5 buckets of apples. To make jelly I need to make juice and to make juice I need to press apples. We are planning on going to the blueberry park tomorrow, there are a couple apple trees there that should be dropping. The pink apple was really loaded 2 weeks ago and running late so it might be bare by now or it might be ready. Maybe I'll see if MRS Cranky will be OK with bringing a couple buckets and the picking pole if it improves the jelly. It could be a quick and easy way to get those 2 additional buckets of apples :D I may have to pick from the round the corner tree which has quite a few and is a really good cooking apple tree, I can probably get at least a bucket off that one.

Losing the antique was a big problem in regards to cooking apples because those were such a good cooking apple they were our main source of apple butter and pie filling.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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We went to the blueberry park again today and got a little over a gallon of berries. When we went a couple weeks ago we didn't pay attention to what each bush tasted like, just picked, but when we got home we discovered that some of the berries had the most wonderful flavor. Today we found which bush it was :ebiggrin: and I wrote it down so we can find it again. They are tiny berries so nobody picks them s there were a ton of them on the bush and easy to pick. I'm thinking I will get some cuttings of that one and see if I can root them.

Around the time we were done picking and I started to go after some apples some crazy homeless guy started screaming about "I live outside, get out of my house" and "mark of the beast" and all kinds of other stuff and making people very uncomfortable, including MRS Cranky so we left and I didn't pick very many apples. The trees in the park are loaded this year, some I've never seen produce before. There are also many crab apples and I'm thinking about picking a bucket or two of those to add to the brandy mix.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by Bushman »

I have 2 blueberry bushes and definitely a difference. I was told I needed 2 varieties to cross pollinate. On another note I can't believe how sweet the blackberries are this year.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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Bushman wrote:I have 2 blueberry bushes and definitely a difference. I was told I needed 2 varieties to cross pollinate. On another note I can't believe how sweet the blackberries are this year.
I got 4 varieties when I got mine for that same reason. The blueberry park in Tacoma has more than 3,300 bushes and they say five varieties but it's way more than that. I think the dry summer is really pushing the sugars up on most fruit.

On the blackberry note my stupid neighbor took it upon himself to to spray Round up on MY blackberry plants that grow along the east side of my house :evil: I looked out the window one day and they all looked like this :esurprised:
blackberries - C.jpg
Now they are pretty much all dead.

I'm so pissed off at him right now. Those are the blackberries that produce earliest and continue into December. They make a very complicated wine and are clearly well away from his property. It makes me even more determined to move where my neighbors are much further away.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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I just moved the 2nd group of cutting from the little greenhouse to new planters. When I made the little green houses I used some of the larger pieces of branches that I thought were too big to try to root and used them as corner braces to hold the plastic off the baby trees. When I opened the bag I found that those branches were now sprouting leaves, so I washed the bottom parts off and fount that they have indeed begun sprouting roots :D So I dipped them in clonex and planted them along with the rest. In all I replanted 43 more sticks so I'm up to 79. I'm quickly running out of planters. I might have to order some more.

This evening to celebrate I cracked that bottle of iced apple
iced apple #4 - C.jpg
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by raketemensch »

If you could come up with a tl;dr for this thread, it would be:
I really needed to work on the kitchen so I loaded up all the buckets I could find and ran over to see how many apples I could pick in an hour
Do you have room to plant all those rootlings, cranky? 36 is a lot, and the parent tree seemed to get mighty big.

On my end, my pears and apples got a cedar fungus last year, so I read up and bought the chemicals I'd need to prevent it this year. The instructions said, "Spray chemical X when blossoms form, chemical Y 2 weeks later."

Only problem is -- they never blossomed. I talked to a few friends here, and none of theirs did either this year. Very weird.

So I'm going to do the spraying in the fall, and hopefully get some blossoms next year. This was the first year I could've collected fruit, so I'm kinda bummed, but trees last a very long time, and hopefully I will, too.
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Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

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raketemensch wrote:Do you have room to plant all those rootlings, cranky? 36 is a lot, and the parent tree seemed to get mighty big.
The short answer is Hell no I don't! I don't even have room for one and on top of that it's not just 36 it's 36 + 43 + Probably another 40 or more and if the ones that aren't looking so good actually decide to come back it will be somewhere around 200 :roll:

They will get very large in time but I figure I can get away with 2-3 years in pots before I absolutely have to do something like send them to random people on the intent :crazy: I can also graft them to dwarf root stock to keep them smaller, although grafting them to dwarf red delicious doesn't seem to have any dwarfing effect.

My evil plan is to buy enough land to have a small orchard and give away what I don't have room for. This is why I have been trying to concentrate on the house. It has more than doubled in value since we bought it which is a huge amount that can go towards a new place. I have always had a 10 year plan with this house and the 10 years is almost up.

So here are some before and during pix so you can see why apple season had to end early.
Here is the living room how it looked when we moved in
LIVING ROOM 10 - C.jpg
and how it looks today
LIVING ROOM 11 AUG 18 #4 - C.jpg
that may not look like much but there is new window trim, fresh paint, the popcorn is gone from the ceiling and there is new crown molding.

When we moved in the kitchen looked like this
KITCHEN 01 JAN 10 - C.jpg
and today it looks like this
KITCHEN 11 AUG 18 #4 - C.jpg
New cabinets and counter tops, reclaimed hardwood floor, all new appliances (within the past 8 years) I have been working on the backsplash and am about halfway through that. I still need to close it in above the cabinets, refinish the ceiling and do the crown molding but I am moving forward and getting close.

I did stop on my way home from work and pick one more bucket of apples. That brings me to 4.5 which should be all I need to make the years apple butter, jelly and hopefully pie filling. I need to find my apple slammer and corer slicer so I can get those in the works but I till see about that this weekend. I was actually offered the fruit from an entire European large plum today but I had to turn it down because I just don't have time to deal with them. I really wish I did because I'd like to do another mixed fruit or maybe one that is completely plum.
raketemensch wrote:On my end, my pears and apples got a cedar fungus last year, so I read up and bought the chemicals I'd need to prevent it this year. The instructions said, "Spray chemical X when blossoms form, chemical Y 2 weeks later."

Only problem is -- they never blossomed. I talked to a few friends here, and none of theirs did either this year. Very weird.

So I'm going to do the spraying in the fall, and hopefully get some blossoms next year. This was the first year I could've collected fruit, so I'm kinda bummed, but trees last a very long time, and hopefully I will, too.
I'm finding that pears are a bit finicky, and a lot of them seem to be biannual rather than annual so I expect next year yours will be loaded.
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cranky
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Posts: 6505
Joined: Fri Sep 27, 2013 3:18 pm
Location: Pacific Northwest

Re: Lets get carried away with fruity goodness

Post by cranky »

I took off work yesterday and we went to the blueberry park :D in an hour and a half we picked a gallon and a half, which I think is pretty good but there was a couple there that were picking a crazy amount. When we pulled up at 7:30 he was busy emptying a 2 gallon bucket into a larger container in his car. He was drenched from the morning dew which is always pretty heavy here. In the time we were there getting our measly 1.5 gallons he walked past us twice, carrying berries back to his car once with a full 2 gallons plus a 1 gallon milk jug full and then just the 2 gallon bucket. That means in probably 2 hours he got at least 7 gallons of blueberries. The only way I can figure that is possible is they must have been using a berry rake and found some bushes that nobody had picked.

We found several that could have been raked if I had thought to bring them with me. It seems that not very many people are picking this year, which is a good thing for us. I think we are up to 6 gallons for the year which is plenty really but we enjoy going out and picking them.

While we were there I took some pictures of the pink apples which surprisingly were still on the tree... some were anyway
This first one shows the impenetrable wall of blackberries between me and the tree
PINK APPLES 13 AUG 18 #1 - C.jpg
In this next one you can see the apples which are still on the tree
PINK APPLES 13 AUG 18 #2 - C.jpg
I couldn't help myself and actually managed to find a spot I could get in to the tree but I didn't bring my picking pole so I could only reach 4 of them
PINK APPLES 13 AUG 18 #4 - C.jpg
Depending on how much sunlight they get they vary in color from green with a pink blush to the most amazing solid hot pink color which I think is just cool.
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