Apples, apples, apples

Welcome to Cowland - named so by our grandchild, Mia, who asked Poppa "are we in Cowland now, Poppa?"  We are surrounded on three sides by cow fields and woods on the fourth side.  We have four garden patches presently; one of which is an almost self-sustaining herb garden.  We grow squashes - summer and winter, green beans, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers of many sorts and are trying to grow apples ourselves, peaches and blueberries.  The apples and peaches seem to be a favorite of our resident squirrels - maybe next year.............

It's been a busy season for garden produce canning and freezing.  Finally, the last step - the apples......... Well, four bushels to prep and can.  So far we have the apple butter, plain applesauce and the cinnamon applesauce completed - 35 1/2 quarts and counting.  That was the first three work days.  The cinnamon apple slices canning commences tomorrow and will probably take another three days!!!  All in all, 1 1/2 hours of picking apples off three trees and so far three days of work........  Thanks Ray!!!  Ray has a few apples trees and generously allows us to pick from his trees.

Picking the apples was fun, we had a helpful duo of (guess what) cows helping.  One of the inhabitants of the field containing the trees discovered rather quickly that we were picking apples - the cows had already cleaned off the lower branches - and joined us immediately.  Our second hungry cow came galloping over as soon as she realized it was APPLES we were picking.  Actually they were looking for service with a smile - they weren't too interested in going to far away to get the fallen apples.  They much preferred to have them within a foot or so of their hungry mouths!!  Keeping them from bumping the ladder was made easier by having a few apples on hand to keep them from getting too close.  When we moved up the hill to another tree, our friendly cows lost track of us and that was the end of apples for cows.