The apple pressing at the Sunday
market was a great success and a lot of local apples were turned into delicious
juice. I went to a WOO member's home afterward and they had just finished
bottling dozens of bottles of cider. I won’t divulge the location though. It is
perfect timing to make cider in autumn and to drink the crisp, clear, cold,
sparkling, perfectly aged cider on a hot summer day.
Waitati does have a good climate for apples, and fortunately they are a
very versatile fruit. If you chose a selection of trees when you are planting
to ripen at different times through the season, you can harvest perfect eating
apples over several months as well as having some to store for later use. You
will be eating your own apples all year round.
My favourite method of preserving apples at the moment is to dehydrate
them as leather and as chips and making amazing, cheap, delicious muesli. To
make apple and pear chips, we peel the fruit, slice finely, and soak in either
pineapple juice or water with lemon juice or citric acid. The acid stops the
fruit from turning brown. For the leather I lightly cook the peeled and chopped
apples with very little water and put in a food processor alone or with some of
the following: blackberries, raspberries, black currants, red currants,
elderberries, strawberries, plums, or whatever else you have. You can add some
sugar or honey if you want, but dehydrating intensifies the sweetness of the
fruits.
We use an electric dehydrator because it’s a good way to use the
daylight electricity glut from the solar panels, but it is possible to use a
passive solar dehydrator, an oven, or the heat from a fireplace or hot water
cupboard, though these methods may require some experimentation. I have often
thought the dashboard of a car on a sunny day would make a good place to
dehydrate fruit.
I have been begging lemons from North Island friends. I send them a
courier ticket so they can send down a box of citrus from their tree. I have
been preserving them using two methods recently: the Moroccan method of packing
them with salt and lemon juice in jars, and preserving in sugar syrup using the
overflow method. Something I have not tried but that would be amazing for
treating winter sore throats is bottling sliced lemons in honey syrup, then
diluting the syrup with hot water for a soothing drink.
It’s time to plant garlic and shallots from now on. I experimented with
planting shallots in mid-winter last year and it was a total success, yielding
lots of extra big bulbs. Planting in winter also means you can plant all your
biggest bulbs and get them away from the temptation to eat the biggest ones
first, as they are so much easier to peel and use and it takes some discipline
to keep the biggest for planting.
The shortest day has been and gone, so it’s time to think about next
year’s food garden. Spread plenty of manure, pea straw and compost around, dig
in your cover crops, and get a few potatoes sprouting on a sunny window sill in
anticipation of an early crop of sweet waxy potatoes. Anticipation is the
greater part of pleasure.
