My fingers ran along the edge of the table as I sat down, feeling the tiny nicks and grooves from all the meals served with love and the late-night conversations held over thousands of cups of hot coffee.
My eyes landed on the big farmhouse sink, deep and solid. There was a stack of dishes drying on the rack beside it—a symbol of a life well lived.
“Nox is in the barn,” Maggie said, settling into a chair that creaked under her weight. “He’s helping drain the irrigation lines. We’ve got to get everything winterized before the hard freeze comes.”
“How much longer do you have?” I asked, taking a mug of cider from Rhoda with a thank-you.
“Maybe a week, if we’re lucky,” Maggie said, and there was a note of urgency in her voice. “The forecast says we might get down into the teens by next weekend. We need to get the lines drained, the equipment stored, and the last of the canning finished before then.”
“You’re still canning?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Maggie said. “We’ve been at it for weeks. Applesauce, apple butter, jams, dried apples. We’ve got apples,peaches, and pears in cold storage that’ll last through March if we manage them right, but the ones that won’t keep that long, we’re processing now. It’s a race against time, honestly.”
I wrapped my hands around my mug of cider, feeling the warmth seep into my cold fingers.
“How much did you harvest this year?” I asked, taking a sip of the cider and closing my eyes as the warm cinnamon flavor washed over my tongue.
Maggie leaned back in her chair, and I could see her doing calculations in her head. “About forty thousand pounds,” she said. “Which sounds like a lot, but it’s actually down from last year. We had a late frost in April that killed a lot of the blossoms, and then we didn’t get enough rain in July. The apples were smaller than usual.”
“Forty thousand pounds still sounds like a lot,” Frankie said.
“It is,” Rhoda chimed in. “And every single one of them had to be picked by hand, sorted, stored, and either sold fresh or processed. We’ve been working nonstop since September.”
“We’vebeen working nonstop.You’vebeen at the diner,” Cami teased her sister.
“And now you’re tired,” I said gently, as Rhoda playfully shoved Cami’s shoulder.
I couldn’t comprehend the amount of work Maggie and her siblings put in to run the orchard. It was inspiring, but I was also a little envious. They all knew what they wanted to do.
“Exhausted,” Maggie admitted with a laugh. “But we’re almost done. Once we finish the canning and get everything winterized, we can slow down a little. Winter is our quiet time—we still have to monitor the cold storage and sell apples, but it’s nothing like harvest season.”
“Maggie, can we do the canning now?” Cami asked. “You promised.”
“I did promise,” Maggie agreed. “All right, let’s make some applesauce. Frankie, you want to help?”
“Yes!” Frankie said immediately.
Maggie pulled out a basket of apples, a mix of varieties, and showed us how to peel, core, and slice them. She made it look easy, the peeler moving in smooth spirals, but when Frankie tried it, she ended up with chunks of peel and apple going everywhere.
“You’ll get better with practice,” Maggie said, not even looking up from her own apple. Her hands moved with the kind of efficiency that came from doing something a thousand times.
Cami was better at it than Frankie, but not by much. Rhoda was almost as fast as Maggie, her knife flashing as she sliced the peeled apples into chunks.
“How much applesauce do you make?” I asked, sitting at the table, watching them work.
“Hundreds of jars,” Maggie said. “We sell it at the farmer’s market and at the store out front. People love homemade applesauce, especially around the holidays. And it’s a good way to use up the apples that aren’t perfect for fresh eating—the ones with blemishes or bruises. They taste just as good; they just don’t look as nice.”
“Nothing goes to waste,” Rhoda added. “The apples that are too damaged even for applesauce, we give to a guy who makes cider. The really bad ones go to compost and feed the soil for next year.”
“It’s a whole cycle,” Maggie said. “Everything feeds back into everything else.”
They filled a huge pot with the sliced apples, added some water and sugar and cinnamon, and set it on the stove to cook. While it simmered, Maggie showed us the jars she’d prepared, dozens of them, all sterilized and ready to be filled.
“The key to canning is making sure everything is sterile,” she explained. “If you don’t do it right, the food can spoil or even make people sick. You’ve got to be diligent, follow the rules, and make sure the jars seal properly.”
“How long will the applesauce keep?” Frankie asked.
“A few years, maybe longer,” Maggie said. “We’ll sell most of it before then, but it’s nice to know it’ll keep. That’s the whole point of preserving—making the harvest last as long as possible.”
