Apple season begins in earnest as Red Delicious ripen. I’ll pick the best few dozen for storage and make cider vinegar and applesauce with the rest until my allocation of pantry space is filled. I didn’t know it at the time, yet this is why I planted apple trees.
The Red Delicious harvest began Tuesday and it won’t take long to fill all eight of my tubs with fruit. After that, kitchen work begins as I race the clock to meet goals before the rest of them fall from the tree.
The most challenging work is running three or four bushels through my small juicer. It is worth the effort to have apple cider vinegar. I also jar a couple of quarts of fresh apple juice.
The other four trees have finished. By far, the best flavored apple was first to ripen: Zestar! I canned pints of applesauce from most of the harvest. Crimson Crisp and Earliblaze filled the time gap until Red Delicious ripened. I labeled each jar of applesauce with the variety of apple. The best of each variety was washed and placed in a refrigerator drawer for storage. I should have fresh apples at least until January.
This activity signals the end of summer. 2025 has been a great one for garden produce. Maybe once all the work is done I can kick back and take it easy for a couple of days. I’m not there yet.
“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
A gardener learns to take bits of fruit and vegetables and make something of them. These pears came from the tree outside our kitchen, a tree that has been producing almost every year since it was planted in 2003. Most of the fruit goes to wildlife, yet I picked this bowl full to make sure we took advantage of the sweetness inherent in them while we can. They did not disappoint.
Here is a post written in 2014 during pear harvest. I feel much the same way today:
Pear Harvest
Our pear tree is very tall. So tall the highest fruit can’t be reached without a ladder and a picker. Even then, some will be left on the tree.
That’s okay because the shelf life or pears is very short, and we have all the pear butter we can use already in the pantry from last year. We’ll bask in the glory of fresh, organically grown pears for a week or so, and give a lot away during that time.
The money spent to purchase this tree was paid back years ago. Just this year, I paid attention to how to harvest them, and found this information from Stark Brothers to be useful. If left on the tree, pears ripen from the inside out and taste mealy. Don’t want that.
This one tree has been the perfect producer for us. Not too many pears, and not too few.
It turns out I’m okay with eating pears for a few short weeks when they come in, and have little craving for them the rest of the year. One more way to sustain ourselves throughout the year with local food without eating the same thing over and over.
Garden tomatoes are a highlight of the Iowa growing season. Growing them is a skill I learned and modified so there are enough for household needs, plenty to give to friends and family, and a generous donation to local food pantries.
There really is nothing like eating a garden fresh tomato a short distance from where it grew from seed and ripened.
We have visitors from the east this weekend. On Friday they drove through an Iowa summer thunderstorm in an open-bed pickup truck laden with boxes of household goods for storage. The load was well tarped and secured. Some of the boxes got a few drops of rain, but mostly the first principle of transport came into effect: secure your load properly to avoid problems. We hardly used the tall stack of towels I got out to dry the boxes.
The lightning and thunder were exceptional. Enough of it to make a show. Not too much to worry. A few lightning bolts hit close to home, yet for the most part the storm did its work and moved through the area without incident. It saved me from worry about watering the garden.
These August days are busy in the kitchen garden. Apples, pears and vegetables are abundant and both the garden and kitchen are full of them. I enter either place, and suddenly, four hours filled with work rush by. Being engaged in the conversion of nature to foodstuffs seems righteous. Neither “farmer” nor “gardener” nor “cook” are the right words to describe this. It is an amalgam of living in the present, tradition, education, and experience. I don’t feel any specific descriptor is needed.
We cleaned off the dining room table to sit and talk. I made a simple repast of cut garden vegetables, fruit, cheese, and crackers for the visitors. We talked about what we would accomplish this weekend, not thinking too much about the future or the past. As the United States has its authoritarian moment, such discussions define us… help us cope… make us better people.
It is an escape from the storm that has already moved on and left us living.
This year, I produced 103 head of garlic from 103 cloves planted in March. Without doubt, a person can plant garlic in the spring and get a decent crop. I plan to return to fall planting later this year.
There were four or five wet stalks that pulled off, yet the rest of it looked as it should. If anything, there were more smaller heads. That is likely due to the shortened growing season. There are plenty of large heads to seed next year’s crop.
I racked them up in no time.
2025 garlic racked and in the garage.
Because of the moisture from recent rain, I set up a small fan to circulate air around them while they dry. Once they feel less “wet” I will put away the fan and let them cure without it. It usually takes about three weeks.
Small fan to circulate air between the racked garlic plants.
Growing my own garlic has been life-changing. There is no going back.
Crimson Crisp apples from the garden, Aug. 12, 2025.
These two Crimson Crisp apples fell from the tree during Tuesday morning’s thunderstorms. They looked undamaged so I picked them up and ate one of them for an afternoon snack. “Delicious,” he punned. They need to be picked. Apples are beginning to back up in the kitchen, so I better get going with the process.
Stories of my father’s people were about apples. The women worked in an apple canning plant and grew multiple trees on their properties. My great aunt Carrie said she ate apples every day of her life. She passed on a simple recipe for fried apples. Of course the men worked mining coal. Father was lucky to escape such a future when he was a teenager.
I wrote before about my father and apples here. This is the salient memory from that post:
Father taught me to eat apples after a trip on River Drive to buy a bushel.
It seemed unusual to secure so many at once, but he knew someone, and with a limited weekly income from the meat packing plant, the family took what help he could find.
Dad used a knife to cut away bad spots and avoid eating worms. I remember him rocking in a chair eating apples with a paring knife after dinner. He didn’t call them “knife apples.” I coined that term when describing the fruit from our trees. (Knife Apples, Paul Deaton, Oct. 10, 2014).
When we moved to Big Grove Township, I planted six apple trees at the time of my mother-in-law’s death. Three of those remain, one Red Delicious, and two Earliblaze. They are all reaching the end of their lives, but as long as they produce, I don’t cut them down. Recently I planted one Zestar! and one Crimson Crisp in a different spot in the yard. This year is the first all four varieties are producing.
Now that I have a producing orchard, what next?
I grew out of the idea of processing every possible apple into something. Apples now get divided into three major categories. The best ones are tucked away in a refrigerator drawer for eating with a knife. Most of those do not have visible imperfections. The seconds are saved for making three major products: Apple butter (usually 12 pints per major harvest); apple sauce (a dozen quarts and two dozen pints); and apple cider vinegar to fill all my containers. I need about 3-4 gallons this year. When the vinegar jars are filled, I usually reserve a quart or two of fresh apple juice for drinking from the refrigerator. Any other apples are comprised of fallen fruit and the least desirable of what I pick (small or too many imperfections). These go in a pile near the lilac bushes on the property line. They usually sit there decomposing from now until winter, yet in the spring they have all been eaten by wildlife who need winter food.
I used to make dried apples in a dehydrator, but just don’t eat them. Once they get used up from last time, that will be the end. In short, I process to make what I make and anything else goes to wildlife. Extra apples are not usually shared. It takes a certain type of outlook to turn a gnarly apple into applesauce or vinegar. Wildlife don’t complain and eat everything I put out for them.
The main challenge in apple management is getting everything done before they start going bad. That’s where I currently am. The Zestar! have been processed, there are two containers of Earliblaze in the kitchen waiting for processing and a lot on the trees, I’ll pick Crimson Crisp today or tomorrow, and Red Delicious, which is my workhorse apple, are still ripening and won’t be ready for another month or so. Apple management is a process of continuous improvement. Re-defining and knowing what I want is important to keeping my sanity in this busy time of the garden year. Apples are worth the work.
I spent part of Monday prepping the garage to receive two racks of freshly picked garlic plants for curing. In 2024, the harvest was July 12, so with spring planting this year, I’m running a month behind. The garlic plants look a bit weird — multiple flowers per head, small scapes — so I don’t know what I will get. Hopefully there will be enough good cloves to replant in the fall, with the rest to be used in the kitchen regardless of size. I have a dozen head of garlic left from 2024. Later this week I will grind them in the blender with some olive oil to store in the refrigerator until I use them up. My cooking life was forever changed when Susan Jutz taught me to grow garlic.
I made a batch of applesauce with Earliblaze apples and it was not as good as the batch made with Zestar! apples. If I get ambitious, I might cut down one or both of the Earliblaze trees and replace it with another Zestar! tree. I don’t see that happening this fall.
There does not look to be an abundance of tomatoes for canning. With 70 cages, there are plenty to eat fresh and cook with. Just last week I made a batch of chili using San Marzano tomatoes and it was distinctively better. This shows cooking with fresh tomatoes makes a big difference in taste. The tomato harvest is beginning to accelerate so we’ll see where it takes us.
Squash and cucumbers are pretty well done. A few green beans remain to be picked. Leafy green vegetables are aplenty, although the refrigerator and freezer are stocked with enough to last until next season. Hot peppers have just begun to come in. There will be some more eggplant and bell peppers. That is about it.
This is a snapshot of where things are in the garden. It has been a great year.
I had COVID-19 in August and September 2024, so I did not get garlic planted before winter. Once recovered from the virus, I checked soil conditions each day into December and did not find them right for planting. One thing led to another, winter came and went, and I planted garlic on March 29. My friend Susan told me long ago garlic could be planted in the spring. Ever since I began growing it in my home garden I over wintered.
I began to freak out when the plants did not seem as tall as in previous years. On July 9, I ordered one pound of garlic seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, the first time I ever did that. If my crop was a bust, I wanted something to start over. It was an expensive insurance policy.
When scapes emerged, they seemed of mixed quality. A few looked normal, yet some sprouted multiple scapes, and some were puny. They tasted fine, it’s just the overall volume for 100 plants seems lighter than in previous years.
By August, my garlic is usually harvested, racked, and curing in the garage on the special rack I made. I want the first couple of leaves to start turning brown before harvest, and we just aren’t there. Some are starting to turn, so harvest can’t be long. I dug one head (see photo) and it looked good. Maybe I’ll be alright.
It never occurred to me what life would be like without garlic. It wouldn’t feel like a real life. Fingers crossed I make it through a decent harvest and fall panting in October.
Sunday morning I picked green beans because they were ready. About 20 minutes into the task I was drenched in sweat. With a forecast high of 89 degrees it became clear it would be another indoors day. Once again, I escaped into my two favorite spots in the house: my writing table and the kitchen.
After finishing chores I sat at the desktop and finished my post for yesterday. I also exchanged emails with a friend with whom I am doing this event.
We met in person on Friday and have the idea of talking about why we write books at the end of the time. We are curious about how attendees get information about complex topics. Do they read books to do so? Should be a good conversation.
I am into the second volume of my autobiography and she is into her third, so that’s the origin of that. She sent along a quote about why we write from Nairobi Williese Barnes that said, “(we write) to shift the conversation, challenge harmful narratives, and encourage accountability in the ways we support and uplift one another.” I don’t disagree with that sentiment.
She quoted me back from my own writing from posts on this blog:
So we write, partly to clarify our thinking, and partly to satisfy our need to reach out to others and express the value of our lives, one life among the billions of people walking on the planet. Whether anyone reads or understands our writing is not the point, although we hope they do.
Why am I writing here, in public? Part of it is self-expression, a basic human need. Part is using language to understand complex social behavior. …. Defining a broader moral lesson is the challenge as the memoir progresses.
There are few finer things on this jumping green sphere than writing about writing, especially with a friend.
I made it to the kitchen at about noon and endeavored to get busy. I started with doing the dishes. More accurately, I started with the laundry. On the last Sunday of each month I launder my bed sheets and catch up on other laundry that accumulated. This took a bit of time out of kitchen work as I did five loads. I managed to make what I call “minced salad.” That is summer vegetables suitable for eating raw diced into one eighth inch cubes and mixed together with extra virgin olive oil and apple cider vinegar. I season with salt yet the seasoning possibilities are endless. It came out well.
The garden is about finished with zucchini. I modified my zucchini bread recipe, substituting applesauce for the oil, and by wringing the water out of the zucchini with a towel. It is to set for 2-3 hours before cutting so I haven’t tasted it. It appears to have had the desired effect which was to decrease the moisture in the loaf and reduce cooking time. It should be good.
Zucchini bread baked on July 27, 2025.
The benefit of these activities is I can shut out the rest of the world and focus on our family. We need more time doing that. It is a way to go on living in turbulent times.
Zestar! apples in the sink before making applesauce.
Saturday cooking is one of the great pleasures of life. I use it to set aside worries and concentrate on preserving and making food for our family with an emphasis on taste and using the garden abundance. Rain was forecast all morning so I spent Saturday in the kitchen. This post is a slice of that life.
The day began with breakfast of cottage cheese and some cherry juice left from the recent visit of our child. Next I did the dishes to make space to get everything clean before making a new mess. Then I went through the refrigerator, which is packed to the doors. I pulled out everything that could go into a new batch of vegetable broth and laid the items on the counter. I also went through the cucumber drawer to make sure decaying vegetables were either used up or composted.
Cucumbers take the most management because there are so many of them when they come in and their shelf life is short. I noted the quart jar of pickles was almost gone, so I reused the brine, fortifying it with some new vinegar and seasonings, and refilled the jar. There are already three or four quarts of refrigerator dill pickles tucked away in the back but we have to make them while cucumbers are in season.
While cleaning the fridge, I made a cut vegetable tray for snacking. Celery, zucchini, cucumber, and bell peppers cut and ready to eat if I need a break from the action. This is for sharing, yet sometimes I am the only one who eats this convenience food. I typically like some kind of salad dressing with them.
Vegetable broth is an easy use of vegetables nearing the end of their life. I make it with standard mirepoix, bay leaves, and the oldest bag or two of leafy green vegetables from the freezer. This day, I used up a couple of bags of last year’s celery leaves to make way for new. One of the last gifts Mother gave me was a large All-Clad multipurpose stainless steel stock pot. If I’m working a full shift in the kitchen, I usually put a pot of broth on and water bath can it. I made six more quarts. At 42 quart jars in the pantry, I am good for most of the rest of this year into spring 2026.
This may seem like a lot yet it was preparatory of making apple sauce.
One of the few surviving photographs of our family in Appalachia is of Granny Reed at Stella’s funeral. Reed’s given name was Josephine, yet I only discovered that from searching the U.S. Census a few years ago. She was always called Granny Reed. She is our child’s great, great, great grandmother.
Granny Reed, along with other female family members worked at a canning plant where they put up apples. When I am picking, sorting, peeling and coring home grown apples for use, I inevitably think about those Virginia women. When in 1983 I visited the home places in Virginia, my Uncle Gene talked about apples.
Next, we went to Norton, another of the places Grandma and Grandpa lived. Uncle Gene talked about apples, how Grandma used to work on peeling and coring apples for one of the big companies. At one time, then, there were large orchards. But now, there is only the coal companies. They used to eat fried apples for breakfast. Later Aunt Carrie told us how to make them. Slice apples into wedges, fry in a little water, sprinkled with sugar. (An Iowa Life by Paul Deaton).
Uncle Gene talked at breakneck speed and I tried to get it all down.
Something that goes through everything is the presence of apples. Grandma worked in an apple cannery, had orchards. There is an apple tree on the old home place, Aunt Carrie served fresh applesauce for us, she said a day hasn’t gone by when she hasn’t had apples. Uncle Gene talked a lot about the apples and how he and the boys helped with them. And everywhere we ate them, the apples were good, the trees bearing fruit. The apple trees bearing lots, even the ones abandoned for years. Eat them green, cooked, fried, in applesauce. (An Iowa Life by Paul Deaton).
As Gene said, “That Granny Reed was always a smart one.”
My entry into Zestar! apples had me eating them fresh and making apple sauce. Before now, I had only every made applesauce from Red Delicious and Earliblaze apples. It turned out on Saturday the flavor profile of Zestar! apple applesauce was delicious (no pun intended). I am so glad that tree is now a part of our home orchard.
I was dog tired at the end of my six-hour kitchen shift. It was an inexpensive escape from the internet and everything on it. A time to live in the past with my forebears, if only for a few hours.
Journey Home 
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