Pollinator Party

They say that once you have honeybees, you look at flowers differently.  You wonder if a flower is a good source of nectar, of pollen, or both.  You wonder if the pollen is good nutrition for the bees, or junk food like pine pollen.  You might wonder if a flower has been sprayed with a pesticide of some sort.  At the very least, you become more aware of what's blooming at any given time of year and wonder if your bees are hitting it up to make you some honey. 

If you also happen to be a huge bug nerd amateur entomologist, you might notice that some times of the year there is only one kind of flower blooming in a given area.  And as a result, that patch of flowers becomes a veritable smorgasbord of pollinators.  We noticed it last summer on our hawthorn tree.  A few weeks ago, we also noticed it on a blackberry patch while visiting family in Wisconsin. (For what it's worth, blackberries make junk food-like pollen, but may be a good source of nectar.)  

Shrugging off the puzzled and slightly concerned glances of our relatives, we grabbed the camera and started snapping photos...let's see what we found!

There were plenty of hover flies hanging out (including this Syrphus ribesii), but they weren't very cooperative as far as landing on flowers with good lighting.

A fancy blue metallic bee was slightly more accommodating.  We're pretty sure it's a blue mason bee (Osmia lignaria), but the midsection looks kind of thin and the abdomen looks not very hairy compared to other photos online.

This paper wasp was our best customer, as it was willing to be in focus and was visiting only the most attractive flowers.  We think it's a Polistes rubiginosus, or Polistes carolina but it's hard to be sure.  They're very similar, and neither one is normally found as far north as Wisconsin.

An aptly-named bumble bee was also buzzing drunkenly from flower to flower.   Looks like it's probably a Brown-belted Bumble Bee,  Bombus griseocollis., but possibly a Common Eastern Bumble Bee, Bombus impatiens.

Even a butterfly (we think it's a Small Pearl-Bordered Fritillary, Boloria selene) was getting in on the action!

There were probably half a dozen other species that wouldn't hold still long enough to get their picture taken, but we'll have to check out this blackberry patch again next year!  Not sure if we'll be back in time this year to enjoy the fruits of these pollinators' labor, but hopefully our relatives will remember this post and have a greater appreciation for these fine fellows while they're munching on delicious blackberries later this summer.

Where are the pollinator parties in your neck of the woods?

April Flowers

We've noticed a few new types of flowers in our yard this year, and we wanted to post them here to remind ourselves of relative bloom dates and note the identity of the ones we didn't immediately recognize.

For example, we're told these flowers are called 'dandelions,' and are delicious.

We noticed violets this year for the first time.  They're apparently edible, too, but we probably won't get to them, what with all the dandelions that need eating. 

This guy we might have seen last year, but couldn't find a record on the blog.  Looks like a Siberian Squill, which are apparently invasive, and not yet known in this area.  It sprouted from some dirt we had piled up alongside the garden.  Apparently we unearthed a bulb somewhere and unleashed this menace upon the landscape.  Oops.  At least it's pretty!

We've also got peach blossoms!  Neither our apricot tree nor our peach tree had bloomed since we've been here, but this year both did.  And while the apricot blossoms got wiped out by a snowstorm, the peach tree is small enough that we can probably cover it if (when) snow or freezing temperatures threaten again.

One type of crab apple is starting to bloom.  We haven't fully identified this cultivar yet (it matches Radiant or Robinson most closely, but there are so many possibilities!).  The Dolgo crab apple that makes delicious fruits is still pretty tightly budded.  The regular apples are just starting to bud, but the Bradford pears are about peak right now.

The feral Nanking cherries are already starting to fade a bit.  Meanwhile, our dwarf flowering cherries, which don't yet look anything like the linked picture, are still tightly budded, but if they make fruit, this will be the first year for them!  One of the wild plums is also blooming, but none of the others even look close (or the wild cherry, for that matter), which is good because it's still too early if we want fruit.  We're trying to temper our expectations of an epic stone fruit year, but it's really hard. Fingers crossed!

What's blooming on your homestead this time of year?

Frozen Wild Greens Recap and New! Liquid Carrots for Dessert

When Katie's out of town, as was the case this last week, the kitchen experiments around here tend to get a little more curious.  In particular, the opportunity exists to use up things from the freezer that aren't allowed in the kitchen at the same time as Katie.  Not that she's particularly picky, but it's been a busy week nonetheless.

First, the last of the frozen wild greens are now used up.  There were a couple quart bags of dandelions and one of sorrel in the freezer.

If memory serves, one bag of dandelions was blanched before freezing, and the other just soaked to extract the bitter taraxinic acids, then frozen without blanching.  Both seemed to be functionally equivalent to frozen spinach, except slightly bitter (in a good way).  In the future, we definitely won't bother with the blanching!

The sorrel also seemed to be functionally equivalent to frozen spinach.  This one we didn't blanch because heating the fresh sorrel makes it turn a weird green-gray color.  Interestingly, after it came out of the freezer, it stayed green in the frying pan.  There was only one bag of sorrel, though (no replicate in this experiment!), so we'll have to try again next year to try to reproduce the lack of color change on heating.

One staple dish around here for frozen greens is a a mix of the sauteed greens, potatoes, plain yogurt (or sour cream if you're trying to get some extra calories in), and seasonings.  Pretty good stuff.  The combination of bold flavors also makes it a good hiding place for odd cuts of meat that some of the Homestead Laboratory resident scientists would object to eating as a featured course.

...such as this delectable bit, which was just as tender and scrumptious as the Curious Coconut promised.  Any guesses what it is? (Hint: click the link.)

An approximate total recipe for this iteration of the dish is something like 10 oz greens, 5 cups cubed, cooked potatoes, 1 lb cubed meat, 2 cups plain yogurt, and salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, basil, and cayenne pepper to taste.  Topped with some melty cheddar, it's a dish fit for kings.  Or at least, the king of this castle when the queen isn't around.

We're also big fans of cramming vegetables into our desserts, although Katie tends to be less excited about untested combinations.  For example, the picture shows the makings of a carrot-apple cider-caramel ice cream smoothy.  It took about three medium carrots (which the kitchen scale said was 5.65 oz), about 1.5 cups apple cider, and three big scoops of salted caramel ice cream.  Carrots got chopped in the food processor with the apple cider, then ice cream jumped in and everything got processed until smooth.  Before you wrinkle your nose, keep in mind that carrot juice and apple juice are no strangers to each other in the juicing world (search 'carrot apple juice' to find a litany of recipes), and apples and caramel are one of the best flavor combinations of all time.  (And that is a scientific fact!)  It actually tastes mostly not like carrot.

That's a big, tall glass of yum, right there.  Yup.

What kind of experiments have you been working on in the kitchen?

Economics of Hunting

Growing up in Wisconsin, the deer hunting season was as close to a holiday as one could get without official state sanctioning.  We were enthusiastic participants in the jubilee--countless hours in the woods and swamps waiting for a deer to walk by (watching the antics of squirrels and woodpeckers in the meantime), and countless more hours trying to chase those same deer past uncles and cousins, inventing hare-brained fail-proof strategery on a truck tailgate while eating sandwiches and apples, playing cribbage while cooking celebratory tenderloins, and playing poker late into the night.

It was a family gathering as much as anything, but the question sometimes arose--how did the price of the venison we were currently in the process of procuring compare to something comparable we could buy?  The question has become more poignant now that we now need to buy non-resident licenses at a premium price of 567% of the resident license cost.  This week, we realized we had never actually sat down and calculated it.  Fortunately, that type of calculation is just the kind of thing we do here on this blog.

Time to put on our number-crunching hats and look at some scenarios.  And time to make a spreadsheet!

First, here are the numbers we used, broken up into five scenarios.  Scenarios 1a and 1b incorporate the cost of a low-end, but serviceable rifle ($300 on sale from the local farm store), and a $25 box of shells for an initial sight-in.  Those costs are assumed to be divided up evenly over the first five years, and work out to $65 for years 1-5.  Another four shells are included for a tune-up and the kill shot, at a cost of $5.  (For bow-hunting, a likely-non-reusable arrow and a possibly-reusable broadhead could also be approximated at $5, maybe a little more.)  A resident deer license in Wisconsin is $24, and the cost for a typical excursion included travel to the hunting grounds at about 200 miles round trip (calculated at a travel cost of $102, using an approximate GSA mileage rate of $0.51/mile), about $25 in extra food (per person) for donuts, granola bars, celebratory beers, etc., and a processing fee of $85, if we were to take the deer in (Scenario 1a).  The "hanging weight" of the deer is assumed to be 80 lbs, which roughly equates to 110 lb dressed and 140 lb live weights, which are typical for upper midwestern whitetails.


Scenarios 2a and 2b assume that the gun is paid for, and is sighted in and close to accurate.  This is closest to the situation we had growing up. Scenario 3 is closest to our current situation, with $160 for a non-resident license, no travel costs (because Jake's parents now live in a cabin on the hunting grounds), and no processing costs, since we'll be gosh-darned if we let some careless butcher guy waste a single ounce of that deer.


Scenarios 4a and 4b are for comparison to elk hunting in Colorado, including a drive from the Denver area up to the legendary Flat Tops Range by Yampa (310 miles round trip). The lowest elk processing fee we could find was $275 (others were close to $1.00/lb), and the average field-dressed weight for an elk is in the range of 350 lb.


Scenario 5 is if dear old Dad wanted to drive out from Wisconsin to Colorado for an elk hunt, and also wanted to outsource his elk processing.

The total cost works out to $2-4/lb for Wisconsin whitetail venison, $0.70-$1.50/lb for resident Colorado elk venison, and about $5.69 for non-resident Colorado elk venison, if that non-resident drives from Wisconsin, with the breakdown shown above.  Processing adds about $1/lb to the total cost for the deer, and a little less for the elk.  The lower travel cost from Jake's parents' new digs pretty much offsets the increased cost of the non-resident license. (Thanks, mom and dad!)  Unfortunately, it doesn't work out quite as nicely coming to Colorado to hunt elk.

For comparison, the lowest beef prices we could find were about $3.51/lb (composite value from averaging ribeye, filet mignon, back ribs, sirloin, and strip steaks from here; it's bolstered by the ribs, but that brings it into the wholesale range recorded by the USDA).  The grocery store conventional beef (averaging prices for hamburger, sirloin, and strip steaks in the weekly ad of our local King Soopers store), came in at $4.92/lb.  Buying grass-fed beef directly from the farmer was marginally higher at $5.23/lb (from averaging prices here, here, here, here, and here).  To give an idea of the range of farm-direct conventional beef, the last link also offers that next to its grass-fed beef, at $4.50/lb. 

So, long story short, hunting venison is generally less expensive than buying beef, especially if you do your own processing and don't have to travel far to hunt.  A corollary is that if you do have to travel, you can probably decrease your price per pound by getting multiple tags to fill on the trip (e.g., elk plus mule deer plus antelope).

Of course, all of the above is predicated on the assumption that the hunt is successful.  That's not necessarily a given, as the Wisconsin deer hunting and Colorado elk hunting success rates show.  But if you do your homework ahead of time, your odds of success are probably higher than the average.

Practicing by hunting the rare and elusive feed bag target is an important part of the pre-hunt homework, but be careful not to shoot any chickens!

Have you calculated your hunted meat costs?  How do they compare?

Wild Greens Nutrition Comparison

You might be getting tired of all our posts this spring extolling the virtues of wild greens, but we wanted to do one more before giving it a rest for a while.  In particular, we were curious to see how the nutrition of the greens we forage stacked up against the greens we grow, so we made a spreadsheet (of course) to compare.  And as long as we were answering our own questions, we figured we might as well write it up into a blog post!

It's a bit of a challenge to get an apples-to-apples comparison because not all "weeds" have nutrition info readily available, and of the ones we were able to find, not all of the same metrics were available for each (for example, some were missing vitamin K or some of the B vitamins).  On top of that, some of the benefits of eating wild greens are attributed to factors that aren't quantified in normal nutritional analyses, such as content of phenolics, flavonoids, and mucilaginous substances. But, for what it's worth, we can make a few legitimate comparisons.

And fortunately, there's enough data to make some charts and graphs!

First up, Vitamin A.  Actually, first we should say that the reported serving sizes vary widely across our source materials (linked at the end of the post), so we had to do some normalization.  Everything here is based on 100 g of fresh leaves, rather than a one-cup serving.  But back to vitamin A: just about all of these greens will give you a good dose of it, but if you're foraging and feeling deficient, aim for dandelion, lambsquarter, and stinging nettle greens.  These three, along with kale, are well over the 100% RDV.  Interestingly, several sources claim that mallow is a good source of vitamin A, and although 28 RDV% is nothing to sneeze at, it hardly measures up to most of the other greens.

However, those same sources claim mallow is rich in vitamin C, and the only quantitative measure we could find put it at about 1% RDV. (Although the flowers have a lot more than the leaves.)  But it looks like we'll have to shoot for dandelion, sorrel, or lambsquarter greens if we catch the scurvy and there's no kale around.

Protein is where the wild greens really start to shine, and finally find a metric where they can beat kale, at least for lambsquarter and stinging nettle.

Similarly, for calcium, the wild greens do well compared to typical cultivated greens.  Stinging nettle blows everything else out of the water, but lambsquarter and dandelion are also higher than anything normal gardeners grow intentionally.  Even the lowly mallow is right up there with kale.

Most of the rest of the items that show up on a nutritional label didn't have data across all eleven species, but if you want to take a look at the spreadsheet, you can find it here.  Also, recommended daily values (RDVs) were based on a 2000 calorie diet.  The RDVs we based our calculations on can be found here.

It would be a shame to spend all this time talking about greens and nutrition and leave you hanging with no evidence of them actually prepared!  So we leave you with this: the dandelion-sorrel quiche we made a few weeks ago should be an excellent source of vitamins A and C!

Did we miss your favorite wild or cultivated leafy green?  Let us know in the comments section below!


Now, the sources of the numbers, in case anyone is interested:

Dandelion, lambsquarter, purslane, and all the cultivated greens came from the self.com nutrition facts database.  In the spreadsheet, when figures were available for cooked greens, we used the 'no salt' option.

Sorrel came from the USDA national nutrient database.

Mallow came from this paper and this paper, using the moisture content to back calculate nutrient content in the fresh leaves.  For the second paper, the moisture content was listed as only 2.8%, which is not typical of fresh green biomass!  So the moisture content from the first paper was used in back calculations of the mineral contents.  Also, vitamin A proper was not given, so the total carotenoid content, which provides an upper limit on the possible vitamin A content, was used.  Also, some interconversion between mg and IU was required for vitamins A and E, which we got from here and here.  Finally, note that the two papers analyze different species of mallow (Malva sylvestris in the first and Malva neglecta Wallroth in the second), so there is some uncertainty in the numbers reported here.  This paper also appears to have the data we're after, but only for a price.

Stinging nettle came from this paper, using the spring data because in the fall, there are so many other things to eat.

EDIT 10/19/15: A recent article (covered also here) took a more sophisticated approach, but came up with chard and spinach ranking much higher than kale, which was on par with dandelion greens.  Evidently, they were able to find more complete nutritional data than we did, but they also mention that their ranking system is similarly limited by lack of data on things like phytochemicals.  But we also wanted to mention that watercress, which topped their list, is an excellent wild green, too!  Now if only they had included some of our other favorite wild greens, they would have a perfect article...

Homestead Happiness May Week 3

We skipped a couple weeks of our HAP posts, in part because we were busy with non-homesteading-related stuff, and in part because we've been doing a bit of twiddling our thumbs waiting for the dirt to dry out enough to plant the garden.  But there's still plenty to be happy about!

First off, the wild greens in the yard are loving all the rain.  We haven't planted any greens in the garden yet, but we sure haven't had to leave the yard for our vegetables!  You may have guessed from the last couple posts that we've been eating a lot of dandelion greens and sorrel (and you'd be correct), but the mallow (in the picture) has also been a valuable addition to our plates.

The hops plant came back!  And it's already as big as it got last year!  Hopefully it will help the bees battle varroa, although we don't have too strong of hopes that the bees will self-treat.

One leaf on our rhubarb was almost completely eaten by slugs (we think), and the stalk had come partially disconnected.  So we picked it the rest of the way, making this little 4" morsel is the first rhubarb we've harvested from the plant.  It made one bowl of oatmeal very awesome.

Judging by the number of volunteer potatoes that came up this spring, we need to do a better job harvesting next year (although volunteer veggies that made it through the winter are always kind of fun) .  They got knocked back a bit by a Mothers Day snowstorm, but they're pushing on now.  We pulled out a couple that were in this year's garden beds, but the ones that came up in what are now aisles will get to do what they want for the summer.  For the ones we had to move, we dug the best specimens into the compost bin to see what they'd do, since last year we had a regular old russet potato from the store sprout in the compost and survive the summer to actually produce a pound or two of potatoes.  That was a nice surprise!

One nice thing about all this rain is that it's made it really easy to pull weeds.  The strawberries needed it bad, and we happily removed all the quack grass in there.

We did take the risk of turning over a couple beds to get the onions and sweet potatoes planted since they really needed to get in the ground.  Hope they do ok!

Some of the first wildflowers (not including dandelions) are also starting to bloom.  These guys are in with some roses that are looking a little deficient in iron or nitrogen.  We haven't seen any bees on these blooms yet...

...but they are working on the chives that got ahead of us!  This little gal was so into it, she started probing the next flower while she was still standing on the first one!  Good work, ladies.

What made you happy this week?

Freezing Dandelions

As we were out in the yard this weekend, seeking some kind of gardening activity that didn't require digging in the still-too-wet-for-planting dirt, we decided it was time to weed under the chicken tractor row cover that was protecting our overwintered swiss chard and garlic.  The row cover is slightly wider than the garden bed, which meant that immediately inside the walls was a tall, lush layer of grass and dandelions.

Some of the dandelion flower stalks were a full two feet long, and the leaves were approaching a size that would make romaine lettuce jealous.  Those huge dandelion leaves, which grew much faster than their counterparts outside of the mini greenhouse, were naturally less bitter because the plant focuses more on biomass production than defense systems (in our minds, anyway).  Which is all another way of saying that, even though they were more than we'd need for this week's meals, they'd be a real shame to waste!  Why don't we try freezing some to save for later?

A quick search of the internets reveals that, of course, we're not the first folks to formulate such a plan.  It turns out that blanching the greens just like spinach, chard, collards, or other things normal people eat, works just as well with dandy greens (although maybe we don't even need to blanch them before freezing).  Here's a brief rundown of our new protocol for preserving one of the most exciting parts of spring.

We rinsed all the dirt (of which there wasn't much) and dandelion seeds (of which there were a lot) off the greens, then coarsely chopped them and set them soaking in a bowl of water.  (Even though the plants had already gone to seed, chopping and soaking the leaves takes the bitterness down to an acceptable level.)  We usually soak twice with a change of water in between, and usually for half an hour per soak, although the second soak went overnight on this particular batch.

Then we drained off the water and transferred the greens into one of these-type pots, with a big pasta insert.  The outer pot has a couple inches of boiling water in it, and we steam blanched the dandy greens in two batches of about a half pound each, for three minutes each.

Steam away, little dandies! (We took off the cover to take the picture.)

Then we quenched in cold water for a minute or two...

...and transferred the chilled greens to a salad spinner to get most of the residual water out.  Just sitting in the strainer basket does a pretty good job, but actually spinning them really gets 'er done.

We put them in freezer baggies, and now they're ready to hibernate!  What's the easiest way to get the residual air out of the bags?  We seal them most of the way across, push most of the air out by hand, then press the unsealed inch or so to our lips and suck the rest out like reverse CPR.  While still applying suction, we seal the bag the rest of the way across.  Don't tell the NCHFP! 

Even though we froze the whole batch, we still wanted some for this week.  So almost as soon as they were frozen, we took one bag out and made a quiche, which also incorporated some overwintered green onions, dried tomatoes from last summer, and some frozen sorrel from last weekend. 

As a point of reference, the green stuff in the lower left part of the slice is some of the dandy greens (mostly leaf stems), and the top and right pieces of green are the sorrel. The texture of both types of greens were pretty good, so in addition to the blanched and tasty frozen dandies, it looks like just sticking the sorrel in the freezer works pretty well.

How do you preserve your dandelion greens?

An Ode to Sorrel

If you ask a homestead-minded person what their favorite spring greens to forage are, you'll probably get responses like dandelions, lambs quarters, mallow, maybe even stinging nettles.  But one that's rarely mentioned is sorrel (or the related dock).  It's the Rodney Dangerfield of spring greens. (It don't get no respect!)  That's a real shame, because Rumex species are delicious, nutritious, and high-yielding.  We recently had the chance to gather up a mess of sorrel growing in our back yard and cook it up into a couple of dishes that are likely to become mainstays in our culinary rotation. That is, they were tasty, pretty easy to cook, and the main ingredient (sorrel) is easy to gather a lot of over a long season.  Read on, and hopefully be inspired to forage some sorrel yourself!

Here is the sorrel in it's natural environment.  What's that you say? It's hard to discern it from all the burdock, buckthorn, and other weeds?  That's just our first line of defense against sorrel poachers.  We're pretty sure this cultivar is common sheep sorrel, Rumex acetosella.

Here is a comparison for how much sorrel we were able to harvest (right) in roughly the same amount of time as it took to pick the swiss chard (left).  That is, although we didn't calculate it, the Berry Modulus is probably higher for our sorrel than our chard.  We rinsed the sorrel, sent the leaves into a couple varieties of sorrel pesto, and the sent the stems into a soup. (The chard went into a quiche.)

For pesto, we used this recipe as a starting point, then improvised from there. We only had ground almonds for the nutty part, but they worked.  We used garlic powder instead of raw garlic cloves for one batch; that also worked.  We also added black pepper.  Lastly, we committed pesto heresy and replaced the parmesan cheese with a regular old monterrey jack in one batch, and that worked, too.  If that means we can't call it pesto any more, so be it. It's a seasoned, cheesy, sorrel-based green-colored spread dip thing.  Call it what you like.

Meanwhile, we also had the crock pot full of chopped carrots, potatoes, green onions, celery, sorrel stems, and a lamb leg roast.  Other meats that would be good in this application include, but are not limited to, chicken, venison/beef, and pork.

When the meat was done, we trimmed and sliced it up, and set it on top of some pesto-smeared toast.  By toast, we mean bread rendered brown and crispy by hot butter in a frying pan.

Taking the roast out of the crock pot left a bunch of veggies, which we made into a creamy soup by adding some heavy whipping cream and plain yogurt.  Good stuff, Maynard!

As a side note, sorrel changes color from a bright, cheerful green to a drab army/olive color and falls apart when cooked.  So if you're going to cook it, make sure to hide it in a casserole or something.  It seems to hold it's color ok when frozen (provided you don't blanch it first), but we haven't tried making anything out of the frozen stuff yet.  We'll report back later on how that goes.

How do you eat sorrel?  What other greens are you foraging this time of year?  Let us know in the comments section below!

The Recipe
2 lb roast (lamb, pork, venison, or chicken)
1 lb carrots, sliced
1 lb potatoes, cubed
1 lb celery, sliced
0.25 lbs green onions, sliced
Stems from 1.5 lb sorrel
1 cup water
1 Tablespoon each garlic powder, oregano, black pepper
1.5 teaspoons each salt and red pepper
0.5 cup heavy whipping cream
0.5 cup plain yogurt
2 Tablespoons flour

Leaves from 1.5 lb sorrel
3 garlic cloves or 1 teaspoon garlic powder
0.5-0.75 cup pine nuts or sunflower seeds, or 0.25-0.5 cup ground almonds
0.5 teaspoon salt
0.25-0.5 cup olive oil
0.5 cup grated cheese

3 Tablespoon butter
6 slices bread

Cook roast, carrots, potatoes, celery, green onions, and sorrel stems in the water in a crock pot until meat is cooked through and tender, seasoning with garlic powder, oregano, black and red pepper, and salt to taste.  Remove meat, trim and slice.  Add whipping cream, yogurt, and flour to remaining soup, cook until slightly thickened.  While roast is cooking, make pesto from sorrel leaves, garlic, nuts, salt, olive oil and cheese. (Put everything in a food processor and process until creamy and spreadable.  Coarsely chop sorrel leaves before adding to processor to avoid bridging.)  Melt butter in frying pan, brown one side of bread, flip, and brown other side.  While the second side is browning, top bread with pesto and sliced roast.  Serve with soup and smiles.

More Fun With Crab Apples

As it turns out, we have a very prolific crab apple tree in our front yard.  It has approximately one bazillion crab apples on it.  That creates a challenging situation for folks like us who are busy with other homesteady things, but who hate to see any produce go to waste.  So we did the only thing we could think of: we made a plan to use all bazillion crab apples.  Most of them are still out on the tree, but at least we've got a plan.  Plus, we've already filled the fridge with sauce and juice, and Katie says we have to clear that out before we pick any more.

We've laid out our plan below, in case anyone else reading this is in a similar situation and just needs a creative nudge.  Hopefully we'll be able to report back over the next several weeks about successful experiments, so stay tuned!

The source.  Loaded and really hard to mow under.

The first five gallons worth.  This didn't even get one branch out of the way for mowing.  Yikes!  It turns out they're just like regular apples, except crabbier.

The sauce-making apparatus (aka, berry grinder), in case the strange-looking device in the next graphic is hard to decipher.

...And here she is: the master plan.  Twelve ideas for what to do with all those crab apples.  We posted about jam, pie filling, and liquid pectin earlier, but we're now revisiting some of those recipes with a 100% crab apple version.  Also, preliminary tests suggest chickens like crab apples at any state of processing--from completely raw all the way to the screened-out leftovers.

What do you do with your crab apples?  Let us know in the comments below!