Apple A Day

Went to our favorite orchard yesterday to pick a bushel of apples to store. (If we get a chance I am going back for more before they close.)

We had the place to ourselves as the season is winding down. It is so beautiful up there. There is no place like home, but Bellinger's Orchard is sure a close second. There was no shortage of apples either. The trees are still weighed right down with varieties ranging from standards like Ida Red to new ones I had never encountered before like Ruby Jon.

We almost filled our half bushel bags with Northern Spies and Ida Red. Then came the fun part...wandering among the trees looking for tasty looking apples to test drive this fall to see if we want a larger quantity next time. Alan nibbled a dropped Empire that he picked up and was sold immediately. He probably picked half a peck of them just for his own entertainment.

We also grabbed a few Pink Ladies, a couple of the aforementioned Ruby Jons, some Ambrosias, Granny Smiths and some Winesaps. (It does look as if our tree in the yard is a Winesap as the apples look just right.)

To me a couple bags of good hard apples in the front hall is like money in the bank. No, better than money in the bank...it is apple snack season. We have been making applesauce whenever we get any apples. There is still time for more spiced apple jelly.......Liz bakes a mean apple pie. Alan has suggested expanding his pumpkin bar franchise to include apple bars....

Yeah, I think I do need to run up and grab another bushel before they close...which might happen this week.

The end of summer

Brings good things to eat.


Special friends stop by bringing gifts from the garden. (Thanks Gordie...we do love corn.)



We freeze all afternoon. (Not freeze as in being cool, freeze as in putting up.)
Husk the corn.
Stack the corn.
Boil the corn.
Cool the corn.
Cut the corn off the cob.
Bag the corn.
Put the corn in the freezer.
Do it again.
And again.
And again.




It is 96 and icky humid. Not a good day for freezing anything in a kitchen billowing with steam...water bubbling loudly...keeping the doors closed to keep the head-banging bane of the heat outside. No breeze. No breath. There are sticky bits of corn everywhere. Sticky corn on the table. Sticky corn on the floor. (Happy dogs, happy dogs. How they love that sticky corn.There is no need to sweep or mop.) The counters and table are another story. No dogs allowed there and it would make good glue, I'll tell you. Still, you make hay when the sun shines and you freeze corn when the corn comes.


Many hands make light work. (And many kids have many hands.) The kitchen is full of teens and twenty-somethings armed with knives and bowls and baggies. There is much silliness and sibling competition. Many insults and near passing of drinks through nasal passages with all the nonsense that is being bandied about. (It is one of my most cherished goals as a parent...to make my kids pass food through their noses at things I say..{ask them about summer vegetables}.....this time they do it to each other though. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree and I guess the corn doesn't either.) We finish in under two hours and save out a dozen ears so we can have fresh corn on the cob for supper. This winter corn that brings the taste of summer right back to us will be a special treat for chowder or just for dinner. It is always worth the effort.


We make apple snacks in late summer too. Ginger gold apples are in, the first of the really hard, crisp, good-eatin' apples...not soft and mushy like Macs. They are so tart and tangy and delightful, just like the great late-fall apples like Spies and Ida Reds. I salute whoever invented the variety.

To make your own apple snack, core and cut up the best apple you can find.
Cut up the sharpest cheese you can find...just a bit.
Add raisins
Granola
Cheerios
Eat
(We often bag this stuff for a quick rake along snack...it will keep a few hours and is full of autumn goodness)

Flavored Milk is not the Bogeyman

The beginning of this week's Farm Side is about apples. It is after all, time to pick and eat NY finest fruit delight...and this is where we bought some Honeycrisp yesterday. I am going to have a nice apple snack for breakfast today....

The middle of my weekly thousand word quota is about China dropping some of their retaliatory tariffs on soybeans and pork,

The rest is about the proposed NYC ban on flavored milk. Why is it that authorities in big cities are so often way behind on current dietary research? When it comes to getting off the fad diet bandwagon and actually reading current research they are frequently much less well informed than people who are closer to the land and their roots.

It's not like it's hard to find research from all over the world that concludes that flavored milk increases milk consumption (sooprise, sooprise) which results in higher intakes of vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats, not to mention more energy. 

From the USDA

From Australia

From ENVIRON International Corp

Milk beats traditional sports beverages as a recovery drink too.

There are plenty more studies of similar ilk and none of them are hard to find. At least one upstate legislator is on this like a JRT on a racing rat.

Assemblyman Brindisi

And NY Farm Bureau has addressed it as well. I hope the Big Apple Dept. of Ed reconsiders and continues to serve chocolate milk and maybe adds tasty NY apples as well. 

Farmer Parties and the Cost of Food

The veterinary practice that takes care of our cows and horses puts on a customer appreciation picnic every fall. We all look forward to it and not just for the food (which by the way is always great). Every year it seems sweeter to sit down with folks  we rarely see because everyone is too busy farming and living and catch up on our news.

Yesterday was no exception and we came away warm with the comfort of dear friends and good neighbors.

As planned, we stopped off at our favorite orchard on the way home to pick up some early season apples for eating and maybe jelly making. 

Scratch the latter, I will glean our own trees for that. These will be eaten carefully as if made of spun gold.

I was chilled to see nearly bare shelves , with painfully high prices, and limits on how many of some varieties could be purchased. One of our greatest fall favorites, the ginger gold, was already sold out and picked out.

Earlier, when I opened a grain bill on Saturday I almost fell off my chair. Nearly four hundred dollars a ton for generic, not in any way fancy, low end, dairy grain. We have never seen expenses like this and coupled with the price of diesel for the tractors and the choking noose of property taxes it is no wonder dairy farmers are selling out in droves.

If this is a sign of things to come, the stocking up on canned goods and staples we have been talking about, but not doing anything about, needs to begin to take place immediately. I would feel better with the pantry shelves full of vegetables and the freezer full of bread and flour (I freeze flour to keep it safe from beetles and such...as long as I have room.) 

We have a beef ready to send and three more ranging from a baby calf to a good-sized Holstein steer growing in the cow barn. Liz and Jade have one that we gave them started too. They will take him home when they get moved into their new place after the wedding. Thus as long as we can pay the butcher and keep the freezer cold we will have good meat. 

And even if we can't pay the butcher, there is one good thing about other days in another life when times were challenging. I personally know how to dispatch chickens, rabbits, goats, squirrels, lambs, and even great big steers and prepare them for the freezer. I used to dress the boss's deer for him, as he was squeamish (he only hunted them for me because I like venison). Alan took a meat cutting class in college so he is much better at it than I am. 

I learned home butchering on the kitchen table and in the back yard, way before I met the boss...if we wanted to eat we grew our own back then and made it into something we could cook. The first animal was the hardest, but if you are broke enough that you wax poetical and get teary when someone gives you a bottle of ketchup, you learn to do what you have to.

I hope this winter isn't as hard...not just for us, but right across the nation...as I am afraid it may be. However, the drought that wrecked the corn crop, late frosts, severe hail and high costs for the folks who grow, process and transport food, are going to get in everybody's wallets sooner or later. 

Meanwhile I am going to have an apple snack for breakfast.