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Looking for the Light, Ch. 2: Apples

BethKanell
8 min readSep 26, 2024
Apple crisp. Much easier to pull together quickly, compared to a pie.

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My “real life” began in 1978, when I reached Vermont and the dozens of aging apple trees on the slope below the old farmhouse that we rented.

I don’t mean that the years of growing up in New Jersey and getting a chemistry degree in Michigan were small. But they couldn’t give me what it turned out I needed: the clear air of four-season northern New England, among mountains and rivers and farms. I jumped into the routines of growing and preserving food with instructions from years of magazines like Mother Earth News and Organic Gardening, while carrying a baby on my back or settling him on a blanket. Apple picking suited us: He could gnaw a fresh apple with those bright new teeth of his, while I filled baskets, pails, and wagons with fruit.

Today I’m facing apples again in my very small kitchen. Let’s call this my retirement home, a pre-manufactured cozy cabin, twenty feet wide and thirty feet long, with a generous porch across the front and a view to the northwest. The porch is crucial. It lets me feel open space despite the little boxy home, and pails and bags of apples can wait there for attention, shaded and cool.

What do you do with abundant apples? Pies and cakes of course, and muffins. But winter, still a couple of months away, insists that I prepare. Yesterday I made, and “canned” (in glass jars)…

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BethKanell
BethKanell

Written by BethKanell

Braiding loss, joy, love. Award-winning poet & author of YA adventures like This Ardent Flame; The Long Shadow, more. bethkanell.blogspot.com; member NBCC.

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