E had a Dr. appointment tomorrow so we had scheduled a day’s worth of town activities. Then we looked at the weather (wind) prediction.

New plan. Reschedule doctor and deal with our ripening apples before the raccoons, deer, wasps and birds finish them off. We were too busy with the bunkie last winter to prune the trees properly so the harvest isn’t the greatest, but there are plenty enough for our needs.

The nice thing about baking with our apples is the variety and blend of flavors. Thanks to the previous owners of our property we have Jonagold, King and Gravenstein apple trees.

With the cooler temperatures lately we have the wood fire going fairly often. This allowed us to switch our hot water supply from the propane on demand system we use in the summer to the wood stove range boiler. Free hot water now until the spring.

The only propane we will use over the winter is for the oven. Most of the cooking is done on the wood stove (soups and stews and such), but bread and winter treats are baked.

Over the years I have realized there is only so much apple sauce we can use so I have turned my efforts to canned apple pie filling. In our world there are never too many apple pies and if it costs me for a little bit of propane,

so be it