For Free

[poliphilo]

You know what?  There could be enough sun and wind about today to dry a load of washing. Sameena-next-door has had the same idea. You gotta grab the free stuff while it's being offered.

One of the good things about Paganism is it puts you back in touch with the instincts of the farmer and the hunter gatherer. I'm not a Pagan any more. Not really. But I think my time in the movement has sharpened up my appreciation of the things that can't be got in shops.

There's riches all around. Accept with thanks and try not to waste.

My father in law has apple trees. They produce tons of apples. These apples aren't as pretty as the one's you get in the supermarket,  nor as big either, but they taste OK. We eat them, the rabbits eat them.

Last night I stewed a load of them in port and served them with ice-cream.

Also I'm cutting  them up and bagging them and putting them in the freezer as winter provender.

Only the freezer isn't big enough to hold them all.

When I was a kid we used to store apples in an old air-raid shelter. It was built into the hillside and had a laburnum tree on top. 

In those years after WWII you didn't waste a thing.  All of us lived like misers.

I was thinking about this just now- on a nostagia trip if you like- when it suddenly occured to me I could store the surplus apples in one of the sheds.  Bloody obvious, really.  I reckon if I put down newspaper and laid the apples in rows- not touching- like my mother used to do,  it ought to lengthen their shelf life. The sheds are just as cool and dark as the old shelter was. 

So there's a job for me to get stuck into this afternoon......

Comments

[serennos.livejournal.com]

I'm sure I've read somewhere that people used to keep apples in barrels and I always wondered how they didn't go rotten. Perhaps they were wrapped up before being put in barrels!

[jfs.livejournal.com]

The point of wrapping them (so my mother told me :-)) is the same as Tony laying his apples out not touching each other; if one starts to go rotten, it doesn't spoil any of the others.

Edit to add: And being brought up by parents who grew up in WW2, if you did find an apple with rotten bits, you cut those off and enjoyed the rest of the apple.

[serennos.livejournal.com]

I do this too (though I found a worm in a pear the other day and although the rest of the pear was okay, my stomach wasn't).

[nostoi.livejournal.com]

My mum still has a small fruit knife which was her mother's. In today's world where we just chomp into them I think we've forgotten that in the past people would slice the fruit and probably check for 'wildlife' before eating.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There's an apple barrel on board the Hispaniola in Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins hides in it and over-hears Long John Silver planning his mutiny.