Summer is turning into fall and we’re in the thick of it!
There’s so much fruit coming at us
I’m marvelling at the decisions before me at this time of year such as; how many pears should I can and how many should I dry?
AND – Should I juice enough apples for both juice and cider OR do we still have enough cider from last year’s humungous batch? OR Whom should we give our extra plums to this year?
Yes, these are the many ‘challenging’ decisions to be made when mature fruit trees are part of your homestead! WHAT A PRIVILEGE!
Last year our crabapple tree was a superstar and we posted an ad online offering them for free. It was great to meet new people in our front yard as they arrived with their kids, picked a few pails of crabapples, and shared with me what they would do with them at home!
Harvests bring people together.
Someone with extra shares and community ties strengthen. Growing food is an incredible means to attract people to healthy eating and the lure of growing it ourselves.
At our place, most of the berries are finished up and then the fruit trees inundate us with abundance. So, it’s beautifully timed to have a freezer full of raspberries and blueberries while still munching on the late strawberries when the fruit shows up.
Fortunately our 3 heavy hitters: apples, pears and plums don’t all show up at the exact same time. They kind of overlap one another. The plums (both Italian prune and Stanley) show up at roughly the same time as the earliest pears. Then as the pears move into high gear the apples start to come on. For almost 2 months our fridge crispers and kitchen counters have a constant pile of fresh fruit to munch!
There’s still some rhubarb to be had and the blackberries (wild and tame) are also bountiful. The options for someone like me who loves to bake are limitless. I especially love to do crisps and crumbles because they are mostly fruit with a bit of organic oats and cane sugar with cinnamon and ginger– they take 10 mins or less to prepare and the whole household loves them.
Our youngest commented last week that he could live on baked pears!
One of the triumphs this past week was a batch of jam made from plums and blackberries. If you’ve made jam before you’ve likely noted the recipes are often equal parts fruit and sugar. This jam had 15 cups of fruit and only 3 of sugar. The fruit was so ripe that the sweetness was in the fruit!
Planting trees is usually a great idea. When it’s fruit trees it can become even better. So, anybody who’s planning to ‘stick around’ where they live should plant fruit trees! And, if you don’t stick around you’ll have left behind something beautiful and abundant for those who will come after you on the property.
Fruit trees have the best ratio of harvest to effort on our property. When you observe how little effort you put in and how much they give back – they completely outperform any other crop such as berries or veggies. Apart from a winter-time pruning and putting lime around the drip line in spring, I do little to nothing through the year. But, every year in late summer I start to harvest hundreds of pounds of organic fruit for free.
If you plant an apple or pear tree where I live, you’ve just launched a very smart investment in free, healthy food for decades to come. Perhaps we could call that an SFSI ‘Sustainable Fruit Security Investment.’
Nature is generous.
