I recently published a post on my first attempt at preserving some apples harvested from an old apple tree in our front pasture/woods. Those quarts of sweet apple slices were just the beginning.
In theory, we should be able to preserve our apples without canning them; however, when I attempted to do this the first year that we were on the property, I found that they spoiled sooner rather than later (within about a month if I recall correctly). This is likely due to the fact that we do not have a root cellar and they were just out on some open shelving I had in our kitchen at the time (single layered) and were exposed to sunlight and warm temperatures.
This year (year 4), I initially harvested 2 crates full of apples; I did that a couple weeks ago; these were the first ripe applies of the season. It's been a prolonged process, but I did ultimately preserve them 3 ways: the aforementioned sweet apple slices (for use on their own or in pies), apple sauce (8 quarts and 16 pints) and apple butter (16 pints).
Ed has mentioned the possibility that he may want to make apple cider and hard cider; but, the jury is still out on how motivated he is to do this. I will likely pick a half crate tomorrow and do one more round of sweet apple slices.
Oddly, I had initially thought that the sweet apple slices would be the easiest recipe to follow; however, I have since learned/experienced that apple sauce and apple butter are way easier... Reason being is that I could just cut apple chunks off the core (skin and all), cook, and then run the cooked apples through the food mill to get the skins off. On the other hand, apple slices required the use of my peeling, coring, slicing gadget and this proved to be more tedious and time consuming (for me anyway). The gadget definitely made things easier than without, but still time consuming... But I'm not complaining; it was all worth it and I am grateful to have been able to put up what I have.
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