Crabapples

When we moved into our house almost 4 years ago we inherited a crabapple tree in our yard.  My grandma had a crabapple tree and I remember eatting them until I was sick when I was little.  I don't do that anymore but I do love making juice and crabapple jelly.  A couple of weeks ago we got to work and started harvesting our tree.

Ashton loves helping - Bowen hid somewhere in the house!

There are a few tall branches that we just couldn't reach - of course they look like they have fabulous apples on them.  Jason rigged up a crabapple picker a couple of years ago but it needs some tweaking.

The fruits of our labour, literally!!

I then spent the next few days juicing all the apples.  Washing, taking off stems and blossom, removing any blemishes, then steaming for 90 minutes.  Each bucket was one batch and would produce approximately 4 cups of juice.

Thank you mom for the use of your juicer!

I froze juice to use for Thanksgiving and Christmas and then last night made one batch of crabapple jelly.

I take alot of pride in the fact that I'm able to make and use something that we've grown.  I don't have enough room for a garden, but doing this every fall makes me feel very domestic.  I'm thinking a piece of toast with homemade crabapple jelly - yum!