In any average year in central Alabama, pears will produce more fruit and withstand pests better than apples. But not this year, at least not at Longleaf Breeze. A late-season frost clobbered almost all our pears. reducing production to merely a handful of scrawny, unimpressive pears. The apples, on the other hand, sailed through the frost almost unscathed and set fruit a few days later. The result – at least for us – is a hearty dose of abundance. We had five apple trees of three cultivars that were just loaded down with crispy, tasty fruit. Our best crop ever.
I harvested most of the remaining apples this weekend and made jam Sunday and Monday. Over the two days, we canned about 40 jars of jam totaling four and a half gallons of jam. Quite a haul!
Listen – 16:03
On Sunday when I finished picking the apples, I decided to soak them in cool water in our galvanized tub to keep them crisp and fresh. You’ll see several blemishes, wormholes, and worse on these apples, but that’s not a problem for jam. We just cut out the blemishes and use the rest.
As we do with all our canned stock, we labeled the apple jam and placed it immediately in the root cellar.
After we picked the final apples of the season and made all of them into jam, Amanda and I returned to the orchard for “gleaning” and came in with another 1/2 bushel that we can enjoy eating.