Nourishing yourself and your family does not begin and end with the food that you grow. It also involves thinking carefully about how you use your own produce, and produce from your area. Finding ideas for an apple harvest, for example, can help you to live more naturally. It can help you find greater connection to the world around you. 

Understanding what is in season, and what is harvested when where you live is important. It is also important to find ways to make the most of the seasonal produce available. Here are some apple harvest ideas to help you take full advantage of the produce of the season. 

Eating Fresh Apples

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Dessert apples can of course be eaten fresh, straight from the tree. But when you have a lot of apples, you might not be able to eat all of them right away. And may struggle with monotony if you simply eat the apples as they are. 

Remember, you don't necessarily have to eat fresh apples on their own. You might also have them cut up in a fruit salad, or another salad. You might grate them and use them alongside other seasonal vegetables like cabbage, kohlrabi and beetroot in a 'slaw'. 

You might also juice your apples, or pop them into a smoothie alongside other fresh produce of the season.

Cooking With Apples

Cooking apples are frequently too tart to eat raw. But these can be delicious baked simply, or used in a huge variety of ways, in a range of recipes. 

Stewing apples and baking crumbles, tarts and apple pies is of course a very popular choice. But you should also remember that cooking with apples can go far beyond apple pie. 

As well as considering the many sweet recipes out there to make the most of your apple harvest, you can also think about savoury recipes too. 

For example, stewed apples or unsweetened apple sauce is delicious alongside seasonal root veg in a range of soups and stews. Apple slices can also be, for example, layered into casseroles or vegetable bakes or vegetable loaves. Chunks of apple are also delicious additions to a range of home-baked breads, alongside cheeses, perhaps, and seasonal herbs.

Preserving an Apple Harvest

The ideas above are just the beginning. There are plenty of ways to make delicious dishes with apples from your garden, or from a local organic producer. 

However, even when you are zealous in making things from an apple harvest, it is still likely that you will have more than you can manage in the short term. This is where preserving your apple harvest comes in. 

Apples can be preserved in a range of ways. You can of course freeze some of your harvest if you have the power and the space. But often, it can be helpful to turn to older, more traditional methods for preservation. 

You can dry apples, either in an oven or stove, or in the sun, or in an electric dehydrator. You can ferment apples to turn your apple juice into a hard cider, or, with further fermentation, into apple cider vinegar. 

You can also create jams, apple butters, chutneys, sauces, relishes and more, and follow canning recipes to keep in canning jars in a suitable place for use over the rest of the year. 

By finding exciting new ways to eat apples, cook apples, and preserve your apple harvest, you can eat seasonally, and make sure you have healthy food to eat outside of the apple harvesting season.