Apple trees and "blogger award"

I'm buying more fruit trees today.  I took inventory of what we have (over 40 fruit trees) and decided I needed more of certain varieties.  We have one apple tree that's probably as old as the house, almost 40 years old.  When I moved here 15 years ago the tree was in bad shape.  I whacked it back and it's done really well ever since.  I know that an apple tree can live for over 100 years but I don't want to have to rely on one old tree.  Last year I planted a Pink Lady apple.  It's a great fresh apple but I want more.  Two trees isn't enough, especially since the apple is so versatile.  Not only can you eat it fresh or sauce it, which are the two main uses of our apples; you can do so much more.  You can use apple sauce instead of oil when baking muffins and cakes.  Apple butter is a concentrated version of apple sauce.  I also take the sauce and dry it into fruit rolls.  Apple juice is delicious.  So is cider.  And hard cider.  Vinegar is another byproduct of apples.  The animals love to eat them.  The make messy baseballs.

Apples can be used for medicinal purposes too.  Bet you didn't know that!  Apples have quercetin which slows histamine secretion.  This is something that your body produces during an allergic reaction; sort of like a natural antihistamine.  Eating a lot of apples equates to better lung function. And the smell of green apples can shorten a migraine.  If you feeling a headache coming on just cut open a green apple and smell it.  You may as well eat it after you took the sniff test. 

Apples will ripen other fruit.  Put an apple in a bag with some of your green tomatoes.  The tomatoes will ripen in a few days.  You all know that you can add a couple of sliced potatoes to soup or stew to remove some of the salt if it's too salty.  You can use sliced apples to remove excess salt as well. 

Some of the kids favorite uses of apples: making dried up old lady apple faces and making caramel apples. 

It takes about two pounds of apples to make a pie or to fill a quart canning jar.  An apple has about 80 calories in it.  An full grown apple tree can produce up to 20 bushels of apples per year: over 800 pounds of apples!!!!!  Expanding on this, three or four excellently producing apple trees can provide all the calories you need in a year.  Not that you'd be able to live on only apples but it sure can make a big dent in your food storage program if you grew apples. 

I want to thank the two sites who "awarded" me the Liebsterblog award.  This is really one of those anonymous chain emails that's been going around for about four or five years but has just recently hit the survival sites.  You are supposed to thank the person who gave you the award and then pick five of your favorites to pass around.  So thank you Apartment Prepper's blog http://apartmentprepper.com/ and also The Prairie Housewife's blog http://www.theprairiewife.blogspot.com/.  I haven't updated my reading list on the right side of this blog in a long time.  Instead, I just click on the pictures of the people who are my followers and get to their blogs that way.  It would probably be better if I updated my list.  I'll get to that soon.  In the mean time, I'm not going to be passing on the email chain letter but if you want to check out new blogs, just click on the followers on this or any other blog.  There's such a mix of blogs out there, and something can be learned from each one.

The grand kids are almost home from school.  We will head off to the nursery and then they are going to help me plant the trees.  Have a great day.  We will!