apple butter

There is an apple orchard here at the settlement, this spring when the trees were in bloom there was a week where temperatures stayed below freezing and all of their crop was lost. We were fortunate enough to have volunteers donate 28 bushels of apples for making apple butter. I don't think that I have ever eaten apple butter, let alone had a clue about how to make it. I will give a little overview with some pictures.

We begin with washing, quartering and slightly cooking the apples:

The mushy quarters are then run through a grinder/strainer leaving us with applesauce.

This was all done on Monday.

Early on Tuesday (7:30) we started cooking and stirring, we used a 40 gallon copper cauldron.

David (the farm manager) stirred, while Norm (volunteer and apple butter guru) added sauce.

Norm (guru), Danny and Dully (farm workers) stirred, I stirred too but there is no evidence.

We added 60 pounds of sugar, cinnamon oil and cinnamon candies.

At 2 pm it was time to can, lid and box it up.

We ended up with 309 pint jars. We will start at 7 am again tomorrow for another batch.