Apples, Apples, Drowning in Wasted Apples

Apple trees grow like weeds here. I hate wasting food. We have been following the old adage that the best way to store apples is in the form of pig. We have canned applesauce, dried pig food, covered a bed with apples so they don't touch, bring the pig to the apple trees to feast and interrupt the worm cycle, dried chunks, froze chunks, etc. We still have lots of excess. Im even heading out after I write this to pick more apples with the hope that they will store for a while to be used as pig food later. Ground fall rots too quikly so must be used for the pig right away. Ill only store the ones right off the trees that look unblemished as they will last the longest though we have found the old saying true. One bad apple spoils the batch. Wrapping in newspaper hasn't worked for us at all.

So here is your opportunity to talk about how you store apples to make them last as long as possible. Share your storage experience...or canning recipes...or anything to do with this mass of apples. Show us your do it yourself apple press or some juicing advice that doesn't require a press.

By the way, neither MrsC5 nor myself are big fans of apples. LOL. We just cant let a food source go to waist. We're sort of obsessive this way. Some day we may need to feed urban refugees. They will be sick of apples.

Cant talk. Must go pick more apples. times a waistin. Give me some good ways to save every calorie.

In a word -cider

My long term solution for dealing with apples was to spread out the apple ripeness in time to get a relatively constant supply from July through November instead of a glut in October.

If you have dry weather and some sun, you may be able to dry some of the apples by cutting them in half and laying them on a warm driveway in the sun. You could cover them with a row cover or shade cloth to keep the bugs and birds off of them. Drying them out will help them keep into the winter for feeding if the is your intention.

OR....

You need more pigs


Cider is also a great idea. The pulp from pressing will be a good place to start a dried food-stuff for pigs. You get the juice, the pigs get the pulp. Win Win

I don't know your situation, but possibly you could swap some of your windfalls to other livestock owners in trade for some sort of excess that they have. Over the years I've created a food trading network on my own community. I drop off excess fruits and veggies that people can use in exchange for future returns. Thus I turn my excess banana, beans, potatoes, etc into future pineapples, mangos, oranges, squash, etc. I've even traded food for buckets of soil, rocks, horse manure, grass clippings, etc....things that I can use. I usually don't have enough surplus to make it worth trying to sell, so I prefer to feed it to my livestock, store some, trade some, or donate it to the local senior center.

We just got done pressing 200 gallons of apple cider for a booth at a charity auction. Maybe find someone who has a press and organize something like that. We got culls from a nearby orchard. Kids love running the press, so the work is minimal. It all went to a world relief organization, so we got some good karma out of it (and if you're a commercial grower, possibly a tax write-off).
Also, cider freezes well in milk jugs and can be made into mulled cider when the weather gets cold.

I'm going to try a few silage experiments apples, acorns, and both together.

We store our apples as pork. We have hundreds of apple trees and I plan to plant at least a thousand more. They're a good source of feed for our pigs from July, even late June, through October. We're in the bounty season right now.

Apple cider vinegar goes for more than $7/qt. at the local store. Seems pretty easy to make and lasts.. indefinitely?
I can't wait 'till our apple trees give us enough to make some.

Cynthia Quilici wrote:Apple cider vinegar goes for more than $7/qt. at the local store. Seems pretty easy to make and lasts.. indefinitely?
I can't wait 'till our apple trees give us enough to make some.

But why make vinegar when you can make cider? Although our cider definitely doesn't last indefinitely ... lasting potential seems to be inversely proportional to current liver function.

Michael Cox wrote:

Cynthia Quilici wrote:Apple cider vinegar goes for more than $7/qt. at the local store. Seems pretty easy to make and lasts.. indefinitely?
I can't wait 'till our apple trees give us enough to make some.

But why make vinegar when you can make cider? Although our cider definitely doesn't last indefinitely ... lasting potential seems to be inversely proportional to current liver function.

Well, you can't make vinegar without making cider first, so it's unavoidable (not that I'd recommend avoiding it ;-) .

I know very little about raising pigs but do grow apples so this thread made me curious and I'm wondering, when you say that you store your apples as pork, how many apples can a pig eat? Is it their primary food during this time or more of a supplemental thing?

I got my piglets in late April. They were contained in small temporary paddocks bounded by hot wire, rotated to fresh graze every ten days. I fed them non-gmo grain and non-gmo mill screenings soaked for 24 hours. In July I started adding apples. This was my first year doing this so i brought the apples to the hogs rather than the hogs to the apples (yeah I know what Sepp would say!) By the end of the season (9/30) these guys were eating 4-5 gallon buckets of apples per day.
They've all been harvested now. I smoked the pork bellies using apple wood from my orchard and also smoked some chops. The flavor is unbelievable. It's an entirely different food group.

Since many people have mentioned apple cider....Well....I don't have a press and cant afford to buy one (Those days are gone). I have a Champion Juicer and...its just not worth the effort to use it. Ive used an old fashioned crank press and didn't find it worked that well. The Chunker took a lot of pedaling. Just Hitting the apples with mallet would have been more efficient.

So....Where do I go from here. We have some smart folks here. What advice would you have for me. Preferably CHEAP advice.
LOL. Several tons of apples are awastin

Here's how we process our abundance of apples:

Apple Juice with a washing machine

Of course, drying, pies, and sauce as well, but the washing machine juice method is great for quickly processing the bags of 'deer apples' gathered up before lawns are mowed, etc. We freeze it, turn it into wine and let everything we can't drink in time go hard in the cellar.

Mary Love wrote:Here's how we process our abundance of apples:

Apple Juice with a washing machine

Of course, drying, pies, and sauce as well, but the washing machine juice method is great for quickly processing the bags of 'deer apples' gathered up before lawns are mowed, etc. We freeze it, turn it into wine and let everything we can't drink in time go hard in the cellar.

I think this gave me an erection. Fantastic!
I informed the wife we are now on the lookout for a used washing machine.

THANK YOU

Check your local home brewing supply house for cider press rentals. Make sure they know WTH they are renting and it's not just a grape press.

Ross Raven wrote:Since many people have mentioned apple cider....Well....I don't have a press and cant afford to buy one (Those days are gone). I have a Champion Juicer and...its just not worth the effort to use it. Ive used an old fashioned crank press and didn't find it worked that well. The Chunker took a lot of pedaling. Just Hitting the apples with mallet would have been more efficient.

I've used a press similar to the one shown in this video (about 3 minutes in). Assuming you already have a car jack, the press can be made quite inexpensively. In the video at around a minute in, they use a garbage disposal to grind the apples to a slurry.

the garbage disposal is a great idea, thanks!
here's the disposal to get:
http://www.whizbangcider.com/2012/08/test-2.html

we bought a new mop bucket with a wringer to squeeze the juice out.
works really good though i suppose if you are processing a large amount, building that car jack press would be more efficient in the long run.
cheers to Henrik at Whizbang for devising another elegantly cheap solution.

Ross Raven wrote:
I think this gave me an erection. Fantastic!
I informed the wife we are now on the lookout for a used washing machine.

THANK YOU

Ha ha! Try to get an older one without the electronics. It's a pain when you have to wait for the full spin cycle without being able to hit the stop and start buttons yourself.

Besides Cider and Vinegar your apples are a major source of pectin, which is used in the jelly making process.

Victor Johanson wrote:

Michael Cox wrote:

Cynthia Quilici wrote:Apple cider vinegar goes for more than $7/qt. at the local store. Seems pretty easy to make and lasts.. indefinitely?
I can't wait 'till our apple trees give us enough to make some.

But why make vinegar when you can make cider? Although our cider definitely doesn't last indefinitely ... lasting potential seems to be inversely proportional to current liver function.

Well, you can't make vinegar without making cider first, so it's unavoidable (not that I'd recommend avoiding it ;-) .

.
i have been living in senegal for the last two years with my (now) pregnant wife and my little 2 years old boy. we live in the country side not too far from the capital dakar. our diet/health has suffered during the first year with a lot of diarrhea and extreme tiredness at the end of the rainy season. all this to say that apple/cider vinegar is just magic everyone that has apple should make it. this year we've been using it and none of us (my boy, my wife,me) have ever had diarrhea this year and we are coming towards the end of rainy season but i still feel like i have the strength to work in the field...i'm ashamed to say that apple don't grow here and that the vinegar come from north africa (but this isn't the point i'm trying to make).
there are (often old) books talking about the amazing virtue of apple vinegar. i don't have time now but i'll quote some of it's best virtue later on this thread.
we drink it everyday along with honey and it has made us much stronger in a hard climate...
long live apple vinegar!!!

Justin White wrote:I know very little about raising pigs but do grow apples so this thread made me curious and I'm wondering, when you say that you store your apples as pork, how many apples can a pig eat? Is it their primary food during this time or more of a supplemental thing?

We have hundreds of apple trees out in our pastures.
We have about 400 pigs.
The apples drop from the trees and the pigs eat them.
This is a portion of the pigs's diet.
Over all our pigs eat about 80% pasture, about 7% whey and then seasonally as available apples, pumpkins, sunflowers, beets, turnips, etc. During the flush of apples (now) the fruit can be a significant portion of what they're eating. They don't just stand there eating apples all day though. They eat some, get tired of them and go off to eat grasses, clovers and other forages. When I've measured I've found that apples make up about 6% of our pigs's diet overall.

I say I store apples as pork because it isn't feasible for me to pick and store all those apples. The pigs are perfectly happy to do it and it helps them grow. ergo, they're turning apples into pork.

Cheers,

-Walter

Cynthia Quilici wrote:Apple cider vinegar goes for more than $7/qt. at the local store. Seems pretty easy to make and lasts.. indefinitely?
I can't wait 'till our apple trees give us enough to make some.

Hard cider also lasts quite a while. I'm not sure how long because It always seems to disappear long before it goes bad.

E Reimer wrote:
Hard cider also lasts quite a while. I'm not sure how long because It always seems to disappear long before it goes bad.

doesn't that mean it doesn't last long enough? Or is it that it last just long enough?

Bryant RedHawk wrote: doesn't that mean it doesn't last long enough? Or is it that it last just long enough?

It doesn't last until the next batch. And that's what's so sad.

Any tips for making fresh apples last longer

I read once that years ago people kept apples fresh by filling up wooden barrels and then kept them underwater in ponds over winter.

Anyone concerned about the cyanide in apple seeds might want to check out this thread

Ross Raven wrote:Any tips for making fresh apples last longer

It may seem odd, but there's a lot we can learn from conventional ag. For example, to store fresh apples, the ideal conditions are just above freezing with high humidity. Choosing a long keeping variety is also important and these varieties are usually ripe fairly late in the season. Commerical apples are also stored with special coatings in a high nitrogen environment, but those things are beyond most home growers.
http://www.bestapples.com/facts/facts_controlled.aspx
http://modernfarmer.com/2013/08/the-science-of-cold-apple-storage/

Given that we have fed hundreds of tons of crushed and whole apples to hundreds of pigs for years and not seen a problem I don't think the cyanide in the seeds is an issue. I see the seeds pass through the pigs. Some of them sprout to become new trees.

-Walter

Walter if you fed them crushed apples, like pomice or something, that's great, that's what I wanted to know!

Cj Verde wrote:Walter if you fed them crushed apples, like pomice or something, that's great, that's what I wanted to know!

They eat both apple pomace from a local cider mill and fresh apples from our trees.

-Walter

I use apples to extend other more scarce things. eg apple and grape puree, apple and chestnut puree, (extra good), apple and gooseberry. All of them sealed in jars. And then there's always apple jelly, (can be made just with the peels and cores after making puree), and apple syrup.

This year I:
1)dry apples - enough already!
2)make applesauce and will continue making apple sauce in different variations (which are many); grocery store applesauce is just pig fodder that I finally understood
3)tried making apple juice (too much work as for me)
4)bake apples and will continue
5)cook with apples (like pork with apples)
6)feed apples to the kids
7)store apples in the garage (my own apples are grown in ziplock bags and are harvested in the ziplocks, and, thus, store well)

Your apples are grown in ziplock bags!! Tell us more please. How? Why? Advantages? Disadvantages?

Offer up an impromptu u-pick weekend or two try to make a little expense offsetting cash, haul some to the local food bank, church, or other org. that help those in need.

Sue Rine wrote:Your apples are grown in ziplock bags!! Tell us more please. How? Why? Advantages? Disadvantages?

Essentially, this is an organic way to grow apples with absolutely now sprays.

Here is a good summary: http://gordosoft.com/orchard/bagging.htm
Google/youtube for many more references and videos: "growing apples in bags"
For example:



It really works for me (my third year now).

PS: this year I also ran this same bagging method on peaches - it worked;
in the contrary to a popular belief that peaches will rot in bags - they did NOT in my case; they did sweat in the bags - not a problem.

My mind boggles...