Easy Apple Cider

A lady across the track has let me harvest some of her crabapples (roughly 19 lbs). A friend of my dad's let me harvest 12 lbs of eating apples. A family at church dropped off two grocery bags of crabapples. The man who rents me his garden let me harvest 16 lbs of eating apples. Needless to say, we had a lot of apples.

I've already got apple pies coming out our ears, and with a new school job (yay!) I don't have much time anymore for putting up the harvest. So what to do? Cider, of course! Here is the recipe which was given to me by the first aforementioned lady:

12 qts water
12 qts apples or crabapples, cut in half
Bring to boil for 5 minutes. Add 2/3 cup Cream of Tartar. Cover with lid and let sit 24 hours. Strain and can (process in boiling water canner 10 minutes) or put into airtight food-grade containers (I washed out my juice and milk jugs and used them).

If you're going to freeze it, leave plenty of headspace for the juice to expand. Also, this will produce unsweetened apple juice. If you like a sweeter drink, add 4 cups sugar per 30 cups juice (or I just add a tablespoon per glass).

(for those of you who are curious about the difference between apple juice and apple cider - apple juice is simply put through more levels of straining to remove sediment).

Harvest and Foraging

For those of you who read my weekly articles in the Strathclair & District Review, you'll know that I found a grove of trees that has chokecherries, pin cherries, saskatoons, rosehips, and hawthorns. All within town (right by my old house, in fact). My mother and I gathered 2 litres of chokecherries before the mosquitoes ate us alive (and I twisted my ankle on a tree root) and I made some awesome jelly with it. Sadly the saskatoons were all dried up and the rosehips weren't dark enough. I think by now they should be ready, although they have a better flavour after the first frost. A local lady has decided to try to start up a farmers market here in town so I called and signed myself up for a table. A word of advice that I gave to myself is not to sell any leafy greens - whatever doesn't sell would have to be eaten before it wilts, and I'm the only one in the house who eats lettuce. So I'll just be selling beets and canned goods. I'm already crafting Christmas items - knitting and crocheting bath sets for family members. For those of you on Ravelry, I'm making "Grandmother's Favorite" washcloth, "Spiral Scrubbie" and a generic soap saver. Can't start Christmas items too early, because (due to my wrist surgery) my knitting is so slow.

How are the Resolutions coming?

I just looked back at some of my New Years Resolutions... and I must say I'm doing splendid!
1) Learn how to make maple syrup: failed - lost my maple-tapping supplies that I'd ordered online.. they are somewhere in the house but goodness if I know where...
2) Save at least 80% of my monthly grocery bill through gardening: I think I accomplished that in July. Our grocery bills have dropped down to roughly $30/week and 1/3 of that is just milk. Honestly, if I had a cow and chickens, our grocery bill would be zilch.
3) Learn how to can with rubber rings: Successfully canned 4 jars using rubber rings with glass tops. Only one of them did not stay sealed. That's a pretty good success rate for my first time, but I think I'll stick with "normal" lids from now on.

Fair Prizes

I just realized I never posted my winnings from all my fair entries!

Firstly, after all my jam/jelly submissions, they were all disqualified due to mis-categorization. In other words, nobody had explained how to tag my submissions properly and so none of them were accepted into any category due to confusion.

However my sewing/knitting/crochet did great. I won:
1st prize on a sewn kids vest;
1st prize on a sewn kids sunsuit;
2nd prize on a sewn ladies blouse;
2nd prize on a crochet kids pullover;
3rd prize on knit adult socks
My sewn kids pyjamas didn't place, nor did my knitted dishcloth or sewn clutch.

In total it cost me about $9 total to enter all my entries and I won $14.50 in cash prizes, minus the $5 automatic membership given to vendors, which means I got a cheque for $9.50. Just enough to cover my entry fees.

Next year, my advice to myself:
1) One item per category.
2) Go for the big-payout categories. Even if you only win ONE it will pay for all your entries.
3) Concentrate on handiwork rather than food, which spoils - after the judges taste it, you have to eat it ALL or it'll go to waste.
4) For sewn items, try to make most items reversible or reinforce seams - some judges are picky about seams and will completely disqualify a piece for a personal opinion about seaming.
5) Don't bother having a vendor table, just focus on crafting items for judging. Sitting at a table is a waste of time - prize money will earn more than sales.

Yarn Contest

Hey everyone, there's a yarn contest - win yarn FOR LIFE wowzers!

Click HERE to enter - contest is open only to residents of Canada and the USA. Good luck!

Total Saskatoon Harvest

Saskatoons (also known in the USA as juneberries or serviceberries) are quite popular in our area of Manitoba. There is a large grove of them growing around the lake just 10 minutes from town, so naturally we went foraging this summer. We picked berries during swimming lessons every day for roughly two weeks, with two larger picks on Saturdays. In total we have foraged (free) wild saskatoons to get about 18 Litres of them (that's about 4 1/2 ice cream pails). Needless to say, I've already made several saskatoon pies, and will be making several more to freeze.

Saskatoon Pie Filling:
4-5 cups saskatoons
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1/2 c sugar

Toss all together until the berries are coated. Pour into unbaked pie crust. Top with another crust and poke holes. Bake at 425 for 15 minutes then lower to 350 for another 50 minutes.

Total Rhubarb Harvest

I think rhubarb-picking is winding down because the raspberries are almost ready. They never overlap (which is good, because that would be a LOT of work). In total from June 22-July 13th I have harvested approximately 22 lbs of rhubarb. I made one 4-cup batch of juice (colossal failure, it tasted horrible - too much cinnamon in the recipe). The rest went into jams and jellies. I will be entering a total of 6 jars in the fair on July 16th.