Life After Windbird, Day 65: Cranberry Harvest and Chutney
Date: Sunday, October 16, 2016
Weather: Mostly Sunny and Warming Up; High 66, Low 59 degrees F
Location: At Home at The Studio, Falmouth, MA
Today was the day to make and can apple chutney at the Goldstones, so I got up, gathered the ingredients that I had, and headed to Heather and Jed’s. When I got there I suggested we make a double batch as we have never gotten more than seven pints out of a single. So Heather got out the apple peeler/corer and with the help of Ollie and Jonah, got the apples ready. We then realized that in order to cook a double batch in one pot, we would need the big pot I bought this summer to make chicken mineral broth, so while Heather cut up the onions and red peppers, I headed home to get the pot. But even with the delay, we were ahead of schedule, so Heather suggested that we all walk down to the bogs to gather some cranberries. The big harvest with machinery started on Thursday which meant there should be ‘leftovers’ that big harvesting operation leaves behind that we could we could gather. Sam and Jonah rode their bikes to invite friends to come along and we said we would meet them at the bogs. We left the chutney burbling and got the Radio Flyer red wagon loaded with nets and pots for gathering the cranberries. But it took us so long that Sam and Jonah were back with their friends and we all headed to the bogs together.
What we found was that the closest bogs were actually being harvested today but that the harvest of the bogs across the road had been completed. It was mighty tempting to just dip our nets into the gathered cranberries that were waiting to be sucked up into the big trucks, but we resisted, walked on, and found plenty of cranberries that had been left behind in the bogs harvested at week’s end.
There were lots of berries, but we were struck by the number of them that were not ripe. We think the combination of dry weather and the lack of cold nights and warm days resulted in a harvest with almost half of the berries still ‘green’—for cranberries ‘green’ is really white. But for sure, they weren’t the deep red that we have seen in past years. The other couple with us, Jeanne Harper and Dan Hennen, have two boys close to Sam and Jonah’s ages, and while we gathered cranberries, the boys were racing around the bogs on their bikes. Ollie wasn’t able to keep up with the older boys, but we saw Dan take off with Ollie and realized they were all headed to the huge sand bank on the opposite side of the bogs for a little slip and slide fun. By the time I got there, the boys were having a great time sliding down the sand bank.
Sam yelled down from his perch at the top of the bank that the first parent to make it to the top would be paid a dollar by each of the boys. Jed and Dan took the bait and Dan made it to the top first . . . just in time to hear, “Just kidding.” Boys will be boys.
At some point Heather started talking about lunch and said she thought she should make grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with slices of apple between the ham and cheese. Jeanne had never heard of doing this, but said she had some apples that needed to be eaten. Sam really wanted all of us to have lunch together, so Jeanne and Dan invited us all over for this culinary delight. I was quite surprised at how good the addition of sliced apples is for the old ham and cheese stand-by. After lunch, we headed back home to prepare to can the apple chutney and wash the cranberries. The berries were all coated with a heavy layer of tiny cranberry leaves and Heather concocted a way to rinse them using the screening Jed uses for screening compost.
The smaller berries fell through the screen, but so did all of the little leaves. So Heather and I decided to cut our losses by not trying to rescreen the smaller berries. Instead, she took them back to the bogs for the ducks and geese to eat and returned with another big load of cranberries. We’ll probably lose about half of our original bounty by the time we throw out all of the small berries and the unripe cranberries, but we’ll still have plenty for making cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and Christmas, for making cranberry bread, and for experimenting with making apple cranberry juice and drying cranberries. I volunteered to bring all of the washed berries home with me in order to pick through and get rid of those that are just not ripe enough to use or were too bruised by the harvesting process to keep. As I write this log, I am surrounded by baking pans lined with sorted cranberries in order to let them dry before storing them away for the holidays.
Today’s double batch of apple chutney yielded almost 14 pints. That will be enough to last us for two years.
But next fall I think we’ll try a cranberry apple chutney to see if we like that. Making this Ball Canning Book apple chutney is a family tradition started by Mark and me back in the 1980’s to accompany our favorite veggie curry dinner. Heather and Jed have continued making this as one of their pantry staples, thus I call it a family tradition. It really is yummy.
