Bushels of apples and picking up those little piggies

Last week, we (mostly I) picked 10 bushels of apples and sold them to the Fly Creek Cider Mill to use for making "a special batch" of hard cider. I had planned to bring them (reluctantly for reasons I won't mention here) to Dyn's Cider Mill, just up the road from us, but when I found out they charge $3 per gallon of cider to press our apples, and they need a minimum of 7 bushels, it seemed like a waste of picking effort (and apples). I can buy local cider for $3.99 a gallon.

The box in the photo is exactly one bushel. I found out that the easiest way to measure is to pick them in 5-gallon buckets. 2 buckets=1 bushel.

This was quite a banner year for apples here, and I probably could still pick another 20 bushels from our property, but it gets a little difficult when you get all the low-hanging apples from the close and easy trees, and then have to venture into the weedy, goldenrod-infested wild territory.

So we made $50 for easy pickins, and then I spent $20 of that in their store before I left.

I did, at least, find out that our wild apples are not all that wild, and at least some of them are probably Northern Spy apples.

I also cooked up my first batch of homemade apple butter, and am quite proud of the results! Yum!

Next weekend we pick up those baby pigs from the last post. More pics to follow!