Good Apples

When we bought our house almost 4 years ago, we "inherited" 9 apple trees. Not knowing how to care for apple trees, the task seemed overwhelming. Spraying every 10 to 14 days, pruning, removing the clumps of apples so only 3 would grow together, etc. etc. Well, after the first year of being diligent in "apple care," we got lazy. This is the third year that we have just pruned the trees once in the spring and that's it. We haven't sprayed them, we haven't done anything special to them - we've just basically watered them with our automatic sprinkling system and ignored them. And we've never had better apples! We still cut them to check for worms, but even by not spraying them, we haven't seen a worm yet! So...by us being lazy, we have organic, basically maintenance free apples! For the last month or so we have been picking a few here and there - some to eat, some to share. But today the 5 of us went out and picked all of the remaining apples. We were amazed how many were left! We filled up 3 grocery sacks full of apples for our neighbor's horses - they were apples that had a small bruise or bad spot on them. Then about 3 more grocery sacks full had to be thrown away - they were rotten or had fallen on the ground (maybe we'll invest in a compost next year!). But as for the "good" apples, we were surprised to find we gathered 25 gallons of apples! We were curious so we weighed them - 92 lbs.! Wow! The girls had fun picking and sorting the apples, and I felt exhilirated knowing that we grew these apples! We may not have had a garden this year, but we grew lots of apples! Yum!