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Written by: Casey Tompkins

Category: Canning

Published: 20 September 2014

Hits: 4374

The housing collapse has certain advantages, like little old farm houses sitting vacant for years on end. Many of these old farm houses also have old fruit trees squirreled away on the corners of the property. We lucked upon one such tree loaded down with ripe apples, and while it didn't have an organic sticker (or sticker price) the paperwork on the door of the house and the height of the grass growing in the yard indicated no one had been there to spray the trees for at least several years.

Using a decent amount of child labor and a sheet held under the tree like a rudimentary slide we collected the apples into laundry baskets. We worked around the tree giving each branch a few vigorous shakes and within a short time we were able to collect 175lbs of apples.

Then the real work began. Have you ever tried to peel 175lbs of apples? Yeah, same here. I made it through a full 2.5 gallon batch of apple sauce and then found a recipe for "No peeling required applesauce". Since we still had 125lbs to go we gave this a try. I can say without qualification, "no peel applesauce" sucks. Just do yourself a favor and stick to the classic. Oh and a second note, that video you see of a guy peeling an apple with a drill in a couple seconds? Doesn't work if the apples are ripe, don't bother trying. It just makes a HUGE mess...