Apples The Ultimate Frugal Prosumer Food

Washing apples in old recycled wash  tub.

We have been collecting wild or should we say feral apples for over 40 years. Apples were very important to the earlier settlers therefore most farms had apple trees. As far as I know there is no other plant that is so versatile and produces in such abundance. I have collected over a 1000 pounds from just one tree.

Apples can be eaten fresh and depending on the variety, one can be harvesting them over a several month span. You can dry them, make apple sauce, can them, make apple pie and other desserts, bake them, make cider and apple juice, and on and on.

John gets the apples ready to press by running them through a garbage disposal.

It's not unusual for us to press several thousand pounds a year. All for free. Well it does cost us gas to bring them home and some electricity to run the disposal.

We also dry a lot of apples and pears. The pears are often a bonus find when gathering apples.

When we just have a few apples we run them through one of our juicers. But when we have a lot of them we get out the home made press made from recycled items: Garbage disposal, old sink, plastic pail, bottle jack, sheer curtains, wood and plastic discs, and an old stainless steel hospital tray.

Wine glasses are a requirement for the first pressing of the season.

When we first began pressing we used a pillow case. Now we use sheers and they work great. Even better than the pillow case and are easy to clean.


The apple or pear juice is used in several ways: drunk fresh, put in the freezer, made into jelly, turned into fizzy apple juice, or wine, or apple beer, or apple cider vinegar.

Filling jugs with fresh pressed cider.

Check out our  Wild Edible & Medicinal Plants blog for more info on what we collected.