What is one wonderful and delicious way to spend your Labor Day weekend on a relaxing trip to the North Shore? Why, making jelly, of course! After we arrived on Saturday morning, Karin took me on a trip around the land on the Gator and we stopped by one apple tree on the way toward the garden to check out the squash and cabbage and potatoes and ….
Well, one thing led to another and before you know it, Karin had very helpfully driven me around to some particularly good apple and crabapple trees and we headed back to the house with bags of our fresh-picked fruit. A quick conference with Helen and Kaare and we were back on the Gator headed down to a few more crabapple trees to pick even more fruit. And Helen went out later and picked a while bunch of really beautiful pink crabapples from a tree she knew about.
When it was all said and done, we took about 45 pounds of apples (or thereabouts) and with some ingenuity, a little hard work, the help of a cooler, strong stick and a clean pillow case (not to mention a small mountain of sugar), we had turned that fruit into 56 jars of apple-crabapple jelly. We had fun coming up with a name (after all, you don’t expect us NOT to christen it, do you?) and think we will hereafter refer to it as:
Hall’s World-Famous Wild Apple Jelly
Made at Cow Hill Cottage
Hall Hill Road
Lutsen, MN
It was a blast. And a little bittersweet, because it reminded me of making jelly or preserves with my Grandma on summer days. Below are some pictures taken from all the fun we had:
Me cleaning crabapples – for what seemed a very long time!
What a colorful batch of crabapple fruit, huh?
The lovely, rosey-pink crabapples that Helen found and picked.
Helen cleaning and cutting her pink crabapples.
Fruit in the pot, about to get boiled.
Pots of fruit boiling away on the stove to render the needed juice.
The bag of cooked and crushed fruit, draining into a cooler, the only thing we had that was big enough.
The jellymaker and his bag. Dontchaknow a watched bag never drains!
The next day, cooking some juice to make it into jelly.
Jars and lids sterilizing on the stove, jelly cooking in the back.
Adding the sugar to the boiling juice.
Sugar added, the juice bubbling up thick and hot like lava.
Getting the jars out of the boiling water and ready to fill.
The hot, clear crabapple jelly before it gets canned.
Filling the jars with the lucious pink liquid.
Jars that just came out of their hot water bath, cooling and sealing.
The sun shone on the beautiful jars of jelly.
The jellymakers and the delicious product of their labors.
