Golden Apricots

A couple weeks ago, Kyle’s mom called to say that there were apricots on her tree and they were ‘very ripe’. I told her that I would talk to Kyle about when we could get over there and have him call her back when he got home. Well we decided that if they were very ripe we had better get over there the very next day, but when Kyle called his mom back and said we could come ‘tomorrow’ she said that she had plans. He reminded her that she said they were very ripe, and she said ‘not that ripe’ then she said she would go out and check and call us back. She called back and said they would be ripe maybe by the weekend. Saturday we had plans so we decided to go pick the apricots on Friday.

I brought several buckets, all ready to get to work, but when I got outside and saw the tree, I saw that MOST of the apricots were still rather green. I know that the ripest fruit is always at the very top of the tree, because that’s the fruit that the sun can kiss, but really the majority of the apricots were GREEN. We decided that since we were there that I would climb up in the tree and we would pick the ripest fruit and maybe thin out the green fruit a bit so that the rest of the tree could finish ripening, and then we would be back the next week to finish.

Last week we went and finished picking the apricots. I asked Kyle if the 3 buckets that I had brought the last week would be enough or if I needed to hunt down some more buckets. He said he thought the 3 buckets would be plenty. I thought he was crazy and found a fourth bucket just in case. We picked the apricots and FILLED all of our buckets and there was still tons of fruit on the tree. Kyle asked his mom if she had any boxes lying around that we could use, and she gave him a long, wide shallow box and then another box comparable to the size of the buckets that I brought. We filled those in no time and still left a whole bunch of not quite ripe apricots on the tree. We left the shallow box of apricots for his mom, and came home to get to work on these apricots.

Kyle decided to weigh the apricots. I tried that last year by putting a bunch in my food scale and writing down the number, until I had weighed them all then I added up all the numbers to get the final weight. But then I realized that that wasn’t very accurate since if I put too much fruit in the scale it wouldn’t register it because it only recognized the weight up to a certain limit….Anyways Kyle decided to just bring out our people scale and put each bucket on it in turn to get a general idea of how much fruit we brought home. In the end it was about 150 lbs. And I realize that may not be quite accurate, since we weighed the buckets too, and a couple of the buckets didn’t sit on the scale right so I had to weigh myself holding the bucket, then subtract the weight of just me to find out how much the bucket weighed. But a hundred and fifty pounds a fruit is still a LOT. I have spent all week canning, freezing and drying the fruit and I’m finally DONE.

I made apricot halves in light syrup for serving with dinner. I made apricot pie filling for serving on crepes. I wish it had turned out a little thicker though, I’ll have to try again next time I get a whole bunch of apricots. Kyle made apricot crem (apricot puree). He likes to pour this on top of ice cream, but I’m thinking I can just open up a jar add a little sugar to taste and then turn it into fruit leather in the dehydrator later. 😉 I made apricot syrup to pour on pancakes, and apricot jam.

I froze enough apricot pieces to fill 2 gallon size bags, for smoothies later. I made apricot ice cream and apricot sorbet. I dehydrated enough apricots to fill a quart size bag, but Kyle and the kids ate about half of them before I took this picture. And I made several rolls of fruit leather (and I have another 2 rolls in the dehydrator right now). I don’t think we are going to get back to pick the rest of the apricots that we left on the tree, but that’s ok because we have PLENTY of goodies from last weeks pickings. 🙂