Chad and Lily were walking in the woods and found.....CRAB APPLES!
I put them in a paper bag for a week to ripen them and get them nice an pink. The flavour of these beauties is fantastic, sweet and sour all at once. I wanted jam but I didn't want to ruin the perfect sweet with too much sugar. I started with an apple butter recipe and added sugar until the taste was perfect. I canned according to the butter recipe, 15 minutes hot water boiling. It turned out PERFECT.
No spices, just cook crab apples simmered in half as much water until they break down, sugar added and cook down some more.
What is more interesting to me than this simple canning recipe is that these fruits were in our back yard and we never even noticed. Folks had told us about the hidden apple tree back there, but the last 3 years weather has been strange. We have plums this year ripening too. Chokecherries. Wild grape. Elderberry. Mulberry. Wild raspberry. Gooseberry. All right here.
I don't strip the plants down though. I leave enough for the wildlife and for reseeding. That equates to harvesting maybe 1/3 at most of what is there, if even that. Because of the strange weather, there hasn't been a lot of fruit which means there hasn't been food for animals and birds and the plant couldn't reseed. Not a lot of folks talk about that aspect, just the flowering and the bees. We are trying to maintain a real balance here, as well as feed our family, be good stewards of the land and animals we care for. That is a complex system that involves plants, soil, animals, ground water, insects, and us. We have 40 acres here and we raise meat animals. Creating a balance is difficult, but not impossible.
From the fruits of our labour, we dine on crab apple butter/jam.
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A blog about farming, unschooling, feminism, 22q deletion syndrome, cooking real food, homesteading, permaculture, and motherhood.