[Editor's Note: Thanks to Daniel Gasteiger who has submitted this guest blog post for us to share. You can find more of his preserving recipes in his new book, Yes, You Can!, and on his two blogs, Your Small Kitchen Garden and Home Kitchen Garden.]

As summer rushes into autumn, some folks are already sampling “early apples” which means they’re picking normal apples ahead of time because they just can’t wait. Happily, for many of us, apple season stretches well over two months, and growers have tricks to keep apples “fresh” well into the winter.

Still, the best time to buy apples is in season when you can get them inexpensively from local growers. And, if you have even one apple tree at home, you may be overwhelmed as several bushels of fruit become ripe within a two or three week period.

If you’re looking at more apples than you can use in-season, make new foods by trying on some of these preservation methods:

Canning Apples

Perhaps the most obvious way to preserve apples at home is to can them. Recognizing that canning means “cooking,” plan to use canned apples in baked goods when you take them out of storage; they’re excellent in apple crisp, apple pies, apple dumplings, and other products that call for cut-up apples.

If you like applesauce, making your own and then canning it produces one of the most accurately preserved products you can achieve. It’s uncanny: home-canned applesauce tastes identical to cooked-fresh applesauce.

If you don’t normally eat applesauce, consider adding it to your larder anyway. You can find hundreds of recipes for baked goods that substitute applesauce for at least some of the oil that typically acts as moistener. Experiment and you’ll quickly learn to substitute applesauce into your favorite recipes.

Freezing Apples

A thawed apple is pretty mushy, but that’s OK if you’re making it into applesauce or cooking it up in marinades, sauces, and pastries. Packing apple slices in syrup made of 1 part sugar and 9 parts water may result in firmer slices after thawing. However, simply core, peel, and slice the apples, and you can freeze them in bags or other containers where they’ll keep very well.

Whatever way you plan to pack them, as soon as you cut up apples for freezing, immerse them in water flavored with lemon juice: a half cup of lemon juice per gallon of water. Let them soak for ten or more minutes before processing and they’re far less likely to turn brown while frozen.

Fruit pies, assembled but not cooked, freeze and thaw faithfully. For a generic 9-inch pie pan, prepare 4 – 5 cups of cored, peeled, and cut up apples. Mix 1 cup of sugar with 3 tablespoons of flour and toss this together with the apples. Line a pie pan with dough from your favorite pie crust recipe, heap the apple mixture into the pan, and cover with pie dough. The finished pie will fit into a 2-gallon zipper freezer bag. To bake the pie, start it (frozen) at 325F degrees for 20 minutes. Then raise the temperature to 400 degrees and bake until the crust is golden brown… 40 to 60 more minutes.

Dehydrating Apples

Apples, cored and sliced, make great snacks when you dehydrate them until they’re leathery—like raisins or prunes. In small pieces, dried apples add texture to sweet breads such as banana bread and zucchini bread.

Dry apples until they’re brittle and you can process them into powder as you might dried tomatoes. Powdered tomatoes rehydrate into something very much like applesauce.

Apples make great fruit leathers, and having a mild flavor they can provide a great foundation for leathers you flavor with other fruits. For example, mix apples and cherries or apples and blueberries about half-and-half, and you’ll produce leathers that taste more like cherries or blueberries than they do apples.

When you prep apples for leathers, core them but leave the skins on. Puree them in a blender or food processor and add a touch of water or juice to thin the puree so it flows (but keep it thick). If your dehydrator has leathers pans, oil them very lightly and put an eighth- to a quarter-inch of puree in each one. Dry until the leathers are no longer sticky—4 to 8 hours at 140F degrees.

After they cool, roll leathers in waxed paper or plastic wrap and store them in air-tight containers at room temperature for a year or longer. Vacuum seal the containers and your leathers may keep as long as 20 years.

We’re so excited to announce an event that we’ll be hosting in partnership with Spadina Museum, right in the heart of the heritage urban apple orchard where Not Far From The Tree originated.

Come to City Cider at Spadina Museum to witness apples be picked, pressed, heated, and served – and then taste it for yourself! Not Far From The Tree is teaming up with Spadina Museum to make this a fun-filled afternoon for all. Higher Ground will perform on stilts, live music will be provided by The Orchards (yes they’re called The Orchards can you believe it??) and Nathan Hiltz with vocal guest, YogaRocks will do yoga for kids, and there will even be a corn roast, orchard tours and so much more. We hope you can join us at this sure-to-be-spectacular event.

RAIN OR SHINE, all activities will go on! RSVP on the Facebook page here.

There will be plenty of opportunities to help out with this event, including picking the apples and making the cider, so stay tuned, our beloved volunteers. If you’re not already signed up but want to help out, register to volunteer with Not Far From The Tree.

“Lindsay’s Picks” is a special column for the Not Far From The Tree blog, courtesy of Sheridan Illustration student Lindsay Campbell who is completing a co-op placement with the organization this summer. While the majority of her workload is to ‘snazzify’ and make beautiful the work of Not Far From The Tree, she also takes some time to pick fruit – and then illustrate the experience!

This week’s pick is plums. You can read about the adventure of this plum pick here and check out the inspiration photo in our gallery.

To stay committed to our mandate of sustainable transportation, we have one set of equipment in each neighbourhood where we set up operations. We’re having difficulty finding storage in some downtown spots. Can you help?

Perhaps your church, organization, home or business has a fenced-in yard or a shed we could make use of.

Our ideal storage location can:

• be accessed 24 hours (or at least from 8am – 9pm, 7 days a week) to staff and 2-3 Supreme Gleaners
• accommodate a cargo bike (about 9 feet long) OR a bicycle and trailer (trailer is 5 feet long and 3 feet wide)
• allow our bike to be locked to something secure OR have it hidden away and locked to itself
• be out of the elements (but this isn’t absolutely necessary — we can put a tarp over the bike)
• also make room for a small rubbermaid container and fruit picking poles

These are the areas we are still looking for storage locations in:

Ward 17 – Davenport (Councillor Cesar Palacio)

Ward 18 – Davenport (Councillor Ana Bailao)
Ward 19 – Trinity Spadina (Councillor Mike Layton)
Ward 20 – Trinity Spadina (Councillor Adam Vaughan)
Ward 22 – St. Paul’s (Councillor Josh Matlow)
Ward 27 – Toronto Centre – Rosedale (Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam)
Ward 28 – Toronto Centre – Rosedale (Councillor Pam McConnell)
Ward 29 – Toronto – Danforth (Councillor Mary Fragedakis)
Ward 30 – Toronto – Danforth (Councillor Paula Fletcher)
Ward 32 – Beaches East York (Councillor Mary Margaret McMahon)

You can double check which ward you’re in by clicking here.

Please email info@notfarfromthetree.org if you think you have some space we could use.

Since the first week of July, 132 Not Far From The Tree volunteers have harvested fruit from 32 trees – and we haven’t even hit our busiest part of the season yet!

You may recall from a previous blog post that a wetter-than-normal spring affected this year’s cherry crop. Across Ontario, cherry farmers have experienced a drastic decline in their yield.

On the up side, this has given Not Far From The Tree the opportunity to pick more mulberry trees than ever before!  Ever-inventive Supreme Gleaner Steve even created a fantastic mulberry-picking contraption to help us with our efforts. He affectionately dubbed it the “Mulberry Poppins.”

At this time in the season, our volunteers are usually busy harvesting apricots and plums. Like cherries, however, both of these supple fruits seem to be experiencing the same low production. Although we’re still planning on a few plum picks, many homeowners have sadly told us, “Don’t bother coming – there’s nothing to pick!” In cases where this lack of fruit is a surprise, our amazing fruit picking volunteers have been just as eager to pick whatever yield there is, be it 2 or 200 pounds.

After plums and apricots have come and gone, we usually enter a time in the season that we’ve come to know as “the lull.” While we await pears, apples, crab apples, and grapes, this breathing room gives us a chance to bring the equipment we need for heavier fruit out to neighbourhood storage locations.

Now that we’re picking in fourteen neighbourhoods, we’re looking forward to the next round of delectable fruit.

Tags: cherries, fruit-picking, mulberries, nfftt, Ontario

Going on a fruit picking expedition is tradition for many families.

David Suzuki recently shared his family’s annual cherry picking adventure with insight on land use, development, and our connections to food. For more updates from the David Suzuki Foundation, sign up for their newsletter.

The long weekend national edition of the Globe & Mail reports that initiatives like Not Far From The Tree are taking root across the country, and far beyond.

Since its inception in 2008, Not Far From The Tree has received over 35 requests from towns and cities the world over to learn how to set up something similar. Read about what is happening in places like Winnipeg, Calgary, and Atlanta, Georgia here.

We can thanks such groups such as LifeCycles in Victoria, the Vancouver Fruit Tree Project, the Richmond Fruit Tree Project, Earth Matters Fruit Rescue, the Hamilton Fruit Tree Project, and Fallen Fruit in Los Angeles. They were in existence when the opportunity arose for Not Far From The Tree to get started and provided inspiration for this to happen in Toronto.

Tucked away in an alley around the corner from FoodShare (our host office), there live two plum trees.

It was a hot day when Not Far From The Tree and FoodShare staff were filled with an inspiration that swept us from our office feet. The secret to finding our vigor on a hot day was a nonchalant question: “Want to pick some plums?” (Something that, in my opinion, every manager should ask.) A rogue roundup for fruit picking is a sure recipe for fun. We managed to fill a small bagful each and had just enough to taste.

Some inquisitive passers-by came right up and even tasted a few. “Plums in Toronto?” they asked. Yes, plums grow in Toronto. And apples, pears, apricots, and more. I even caught a few sweet smiles as they walked off, pleased with their new knowledge and a taste of their own personal fruit heaven. It’s always so revitalizing for me to see a person’s face light up from the simple action of picking and eating local fresh fruit.

Most plums will be ready in another week or two: prepare the picking poles! Keep your eyes to the sky for crabapples and apricots, too.

Here are a few tips on how to make mulberry wine (well, not the kind you’d want to drink, but at least the kind that’s fun to make!) and other ways to have fun while picking this delicious, squishy fruit:

• If upon arrival, you discover that your fanciest footwear may not have been the best choice for a pick (hey, riding your bike in heels is all the rage these days), then kick off your shoes and squish your feet high in mulberry slop.

• Inspired by these guys (below), test out a good ol’ fashion fruit stomp.

• Squishing mulberries between your toes is comparable to stepping on slugs. but much sweeter, and much more fun!

• Avoid the temptation to lick your heels (Ew.)

• And wear purple!