Get your homemade apple butter HERE!

September 25, 2008

Every year, I help make homemade apple butter at Ozark Highlands Christian Church (DOC) here in mid-Missouri. Apple Butter Days this year are October 3rd and 4th. We have 2 huge copper kettles that we drag out onto the church lawn. Talk about HEAVY! After we get them in place, we fill them full of apples and other good stuff, then light fires underneath. My husband, Rick, and I are providing the firewood this year. Once the kettle starts getting good and hot, we start stirring the contents with big ol’ funny looking wooden paddles. That part goes on for a LONG time! When it’s good and done according to our chief apple butter cook, Jessie, we start the assembly line process.

• Dip the apple butter from the big kettles into a smaller pots.
• Place the pots at the beginning of the filling line where we have a couple of folks who will dip it out of the pots into the jars.
• Once the jars are filled (and the fillers have successfully fought off the bees that fly around their heads trying to get a taste), the hot jars are passed to the folks who place the lids on 
• The “lidders” pass the jars to the “ringers” who place rings over the lids and tighten ‘em up
• The “ringers” pass the filled, capped jars (still plenty hot) on to the wipers who wipe excess sticky stuff from the tops, bottoms and sides of the jars.
• The “wipers” pass the jars to the labelers who stick on the labels
• The “labelers” pass the jars to the boxers who put the still hot newly labelled jars into boxes.
• Once all the apple butter has been dipped, filled, lidded, ringed, wiped, labelled and boxed the sale counter is open!

This is only the tail-end of the process. People start preparing the apples and jars a day in advance. The apples have to be peeled and cored and the jars have to be sterilized. A lot of work and a lot of love goes into our apple butter preparation.

We always have people waiting in line to buy fresh, hot apple butter in quart, pint and 1/2 pint sizes. Not all the jars go on the sale table. Some people like to pre-order their apple butter. They know they might not get any if they don’t! 

OK, so why am I writing about apple butter on a tekkie blog? Well, it is a technical process but truthfully, it’s because I want to offer all of my readers the chance to get in their own pre-orders. This will be the first time we’ve offered our apple butter for sale online and you, lucky readers, have the first chance to get some!

I don’t know exactly what the shipping charges will be since I don’t know how much apple butter you want! I tell you what, you send me an e-mail with size/quantity and where we need to ship your order and I’ll tell you what your final cost will be. All orders are prepaid. The proceeds from our apple butter sale are always used to support a worthwhile community project. 

The order department is open, so get your order in TODAY! 

Posted in Views From The Coop