There on the wood burning stove was a cast iron pan with apple cores and halves cooking in a liquid. The "women of the house" were cooking down the liquid of apple and water to extract the natural pectin from the apples. Before the convenient powder stuff was in the store, this is what people did to get pectin used to make jelled preserves.......back in the days.
In the 1920s and 1930s, factories were built that commercially extracted pectin from dried apple pomace in regions that produced apple juice. At that point..............Grandma was happy as hell because it was an all day deal to make this stuff....such as I am doing right now! I suppose getting rid of that wood stove too..... was a thrill!
Yes yes......you are asking why I am doing such a task. There are several reason actually.
Apple trees have a zillion little apples on the branches right after the blooms have finished doing their job. The newly forming apples are close side by side.....like sort of like how grapes grow in clusters. This is not good for the farmer. The apple fruit does not become uniformed in shape......it gets blemished.....and they do not grow to a full size apple as you get in the grocery store. The trees have to be thinned out.
Oh......now we have a vast pectin source and not a waste of raw material that would had gone off to the chickens and horses. The Natomas farm has a good size orchard getting established here.
The other reason is that commercial pectin is costly. Only is the jar for canning more costlier ....but not by much.
I have said over and over that it is good to experiment with everything that concerns a farm. For making pectin.......it is easy as heck. I have incorporated doing other tasks while the apples are boiling down.....such as writing on my blog......catching a movie off the idiot tube......so forth.
I am sure that any non farmer here that is reading this blog.....can located a local apple farm and ask for the unwanted fruit from their orchard.
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