Apple juice – Beautiful Chaos

Apple harvest fall 2024

Many many apples, apple moth maggots, making apple sauce and lots of apple juice

The large apple trees that where already on our property when we bought it are packed with apples again (last year we hat very little apples). A lot of apples started falling, but with that abundance hanging on the tree it was hardly noticeable. We gave a lot of the fallen fruit to the sheep, who loved it, and we started making apple sauce with the most useful apples. The apples falling from the trees where apples with maggots from the apple moth, so the first few batches of apple sauce needed some honey, since the apples where not really ripe yet and the apple sauce was a bit to sour for our taste.

At some point a lot of apples without maggots fell from the trees and we noticed that they where already ripe, earlier in the season as they where in previous years. We got ourselves an appointment at the juicing company and collected all of the apples from the ground for more apple sauce. This was the biggest batch of apple sauce I made at once so far. I filled a 15 litre pot until the edge with cubes of apples and boiled the apples with some apple juice until tender. I pureed the apple sauce, since we like it smooth and water bath canned 6 batches at 90°C for 30 min. (Weck-Style). For me this was a day’s work.

Weck-Jars filled with apple sauce, stacked together

Over the course of several weeks we made a lot of apple sauce, but if it will be enough for the whole year…., time will tell.

After the apple sauce making and canning marathon, we picked all of the apples out of the three big apple trees we have. This took the better part of the day and filled up 15 grain bags. We ended up with 330 litres of apple juice, which is a lot more than we had 2 years ago, which is great, since we went out of apple juice early this summer. Maybe now we will have enough for the coming 2 years.

As with the plums we had been clearing as much of the apples with maggots in them as we could and we will have to keep an eye on things after apples start forming in the spring again. When fruit start falling again in the spring we will have to clear them to keep the maggot pressure low for the next season.

Making apple juice and the birds ate my elderberries

Finally the time came to harvest our apples. We hat just finished our last apple juice from for 2 years, so it came just right. Unfortunately the birds ate most of my elderberries, so there are too little left to squeeze for the juice.

We did manage to harvest a crate of elderberries which where combined with apples to reach the volume needed to squeeze for the juice and this juice tastes amazing. It has a nice colour to.

We have so many apples this year that we divided the harvest over 3 times of picking, bringing away and picking up our juice, but finally we have finished this year’s harvest of apples. We have 231 litres of apple juice, which is a lot and will last us longer than the 2 years we need to store for. (These 3 older trees on our property only have a useful amount of apples every 2 years. The other year there are hardly any apples on these trees)

The apple elderberry juice we have 39 litres and I am very happy for that, since it is very good for your health. Next year we have to try to harvest the elderberries before the birds eat all of them.

The juice we get in these 3 Litre bags with a little tap for which we have a box to put them in. I usually do not like to put food or drinks in plastic, but the advantage of these bags is that the juice, after opening a bag, does not turn bad. While using the bag falls together and no air gets in. This way the juice lasts a very long time without fermenting. The apple juice has a bit lighter colour as it did last year and the apple elderberry juice has a very beautiful colour.

The elderberries are taking on color and apples, apples, apples, apples….

We are going to have so much juice

The elderflowers got rained up on last spring, so I did not harvest any of them. By the looks of it we will have a splendid elderberry harvest (that is when the bird leave some for us). We will have these squeezed for there juice. I love to have elderberry juice for health reasons. Especially in winter.

Last year we did not have any apples, but now we will have so, so many apples. I am already looking forward to the new juice we will get from all of these apples. Currently we are almost out of our apple juice from 2 year ago. These apple trees where already on the property when we bought it. The apples do not taste very well for eating fresh, so we have all of the apples turned into juice. Another 6-7 weeks and it is harvest time.