Apple Harvest

L helps stir and cook apples

Cooked apples coming through the Squeez-O

Wow! Look at that big belly! 36 weeks.

Washed apples.

Running the squeez-o on man power!

Feeding scraps to the cows.

It is not lost to me that the every day gifts are the sweetest. That we could go to the farm for a visit and have cousins tell us to "help ourselves" to the apples from their trees. So, we picked apples with Grandpa and nearly-relatives from the ground for the cows and filled boxes of apples from the tree for eating and making applesauce. Then Aunt brought down her Squeez-O for us to use and Grandma washed some jars from her basement. And even as the week's visit unraveled to the last days, L and I rolled up our sleeves and sliced apples and cooked apples and mashed them through the Squeez-O. Little boys woke from naps and joined us, cranking the handle hard and delighting at the juice squirting out through the sieve. It was cold enough to leave our two big pots of sauce on the porch overnight and then Grandma did most of the work of putting our applesauce into jars the next morning. We returned to VA with 10 quarts of farm applesauce. . . and it is truly delicious. The sauce is a beautiful blush pink from the mix of yellow and red apples and it is sweet and wonderful, without any sugar added at all. All of that effort, though. . . at least a full day of work for 10 quarts of applesauce. Our family could eat this in a few weeks! And it would only cost me $20 at the store.

Yet... it is good. It is good to work with my children. (1061)
It is good to use apples that have grown on trees without any help at all. (1062)
It is good to borrow from and give back to family. (1063)
It tastes like so many farm memories. (1064)
It is good to know where our food is coming from and what is in it. (1065)
There was good conversation with my daughter as we worked together. (1066)
It is good to taste the sweetness and see the beauty and give thanks. (1067)
It is good to give back. . . feeding cows the scraps and putting applesauce in the freezer, too. (1068)
"All hard work brings a profit." It is good that His word is always true, always trustworthy. (1069)
How good it was to be at the farm! (1070)