It's fascinating how different our apples are each year. Mostly I lightly stew them then freeze them and we've used them all up by April or May. Last year the apples were medium-sized, mostly reddish and juicy enough to be stewed without water and I still had one frozen kilo left when this year's crop started five weeks ago.

This year the apples are yellowy green, need water adding for stewing but, counter-intuitively, are quite large. There are a few more maggot holes to cut out than last year but far fewer than our first couple of years in this house.


(Just been told I'm channelling Twilight here. Should've gone into designing book covers.)