Behold...Pretty Much Our Entire Harvest

 A few weeks ago, I took a picture of a singular nectarine. Then I posted the picture on social media with some snarky comment about it being our pre-windstorm harvest.

I guess nature got the last laugh.

Right now, on the ground underneath the tree lie several fallen nectarines. 

We live in an area with clean air, it's a major reason we moved here. Clean air, however, comes with a price. The price is wind. It's darn windy at the top of the valley. Previously, we lived in an area famous for winds. It was not uncommon to have 100 m.p.h. plus winds from time to time. When those hit, trees--usually tall pine trees--would fall, shingles lost, fences and trampolines destroyed. 

Here, it's different. The winds are not as severe, but they're more constant. I think we could power our entire house just by wind power. We knew the winds were coming, we just didn't pick the fruit in time.

This was the first year our nectarine bore fruit. To be honest, it looked a little strange...not fuzzy as nectarines usually are. Maybe it's a first-fruiting thing. I don't know.

Yes, I made a lame joke about the single piece of fruit being  our harvest. Turns out, that was pretty much it.

Turning Apples Into Apple Crumble...Delicious

 Last year we planted a couple fruit trees...one apricot, one nectarine, and an apple. We missed out on the nectarines this summer, the apricot harvest was subpar, but the apples...they were the last to ripen. 

And boy, are they good!

Our little tree was so overburdened with apples, it was sagging, working tirelessly to provide delicious food for the family that planted the tree, watered it, and kept it safe. I only picked about 2/3 of the fruit so make Apple Crumble.

My wife had never before made that particular dessert. She hit it out of the park on her first try. The picture does not do it justice. 

It's strange to be able to grow our own fruit. I don't know why. I guess because we--as have almost everyone--are no longer tied to the land as our ancestors were. They literally had to grow enough food to survive. That kind of incentive is hard to beat. I'm sure kids complained back then about weeding the garden, watering the crops, and everything that comes with growing food, but I'm sure they understood better than people do today how important it was to put in the hard work.

When the last apples are picked (and hopefully used for more crumble...), the year's harvest will have come to an end. We can then look forward to what our little trees do next year. We hope for nectarines and more apricots, but if the apple yield is the same, I won't complain.

Gathering In The Harvest...

I took our dog out this morning and noticed a few apples we missed on our apple tree. I picked them and brought them in. Behold--our harvest! There were actually a few more apples that were picked earlier, but in general, we did not get a lot of apples this year.

We have a couple of fruit trees, some apple, an apricot, nectarine, plum, and cherry trees. They're not big so we don't get a lot of fruit--except the nectarine tree. That thing almost comes down each season for having too much fruit on its branches.

We did have apples on our tree, but due to certain circumstances, many were inedible. The first problem was we didn't spray our fruit. We usually don't. There were so many apples with worm holes on the tree, we just left them there. I suppose if we were hungry enough, we could pick all the apples and just eat the non-wormed parts.

And we have animals that descend from the mountain and do a little--or a lot--of nibbling. Yes, deer have come down and eaten many an apple. Hard to win a battle between animals that invade your crop in the middle of the night and will eat the goods even before they're ripe. Yup, I'm losing that battle every time.

So, here's to the harvest of 2016. Here's hoping next year will be even better!