The Annual Apple Harvest

After I got back from my big trip we were finally able to harvest our bounty of Golden Delicious apples! These little trees we planted are troopers--they do amazing every year despite drought, bugs, and damage. One of the trees had some pretty large branches broken over last winter after a truck plowed snow right into them...we were not happy! I tried to bandage the branches up, but with the weight of the apples in late summer they ended up breaking off. I'm hoping to do a good prune in the spring and work with what is left.

We also lost several apples over the summer to miscellaneous nature issues, probably 30-50! But even after all that we were able to pick a ton that will keep us and the boys happy well into the winter. And they are DELICIOUS.

We made our first fall visit to the Amish market where I loaded up on cabbage, acorn squash, purple cauliflower, carving pumpkins, butternut squash, and a pie pumpkin!

I processed the cauliflower into florets and froze 2 huge gallon bags full to put into the freezer.

With all of our apples I made a big batch of cinnamon applesauce....

....oatmeal apple breakfast cookies....

...and I dehydrated several for apple chips!

I also baked down the pie pumpkin for my homemade pumpkin puree. I love cooking with pumpkin!

The nights are starting to get pretty cold here, so that means soup season! I made a big batch of minestrone that everyone devoured. 

Thanks for reading!!!!