This last few days we've been foraging for apples that grow in the wild and on old homeplaces up in the mountains. All types and varieties of apples can be found growing~HUGE trees bigger than any apple tree I've ever seen~ all over one particular county in the mountains of this state and they are pretty much free for the taking unless they are on someone's property...most are not.
Just takes work to get them, often scratchy and pain inducing work as these are in the brush, have a zillion suckers sticking out of the base of the tree that rip your skin and hair, and some have limbs growing low enough to scalp a person....it's an effort to pick up these apples. Sometimes you can shake the tree and then you get zonked on the head as well. Also gotta look where you put your hands as there could be rattle snakes in these areas, as well as hornets and yellowjackets coming to the apples.
I'll try to count how many different varieties of apples we gathered in just the one day of picking up apples when I sort these out. We were pretty much late to the gathering, so we didn't get as many as we had hoped...was hoping to come back with a truck bed level of apples, but barely got a little over 1/3 full. We'll also be trying to gather from 2 trees of my sister's in the coming week to add to this harvest.
Will be making apple sauce and apple butter, as well as canning some for pie filling. The small and damaged apples will go to chickens, dogs and deer. Jake already had a taste of his familiar...the juicy, tangy, sweetly sour and delectable fruit we call "a mountain apple". He was overjoyed! He used to have a whole orchard of these to feast upon each fall and he would eat them constantly and never got tired of it.
Will take pics of the apple processing, as we are doing it in the copper kettle this year...should be a pretty thing and the weather is supposed to be stunning, so we will make a work day out of it and have a weeny roast and bonfire that night.
We'd have so much fun and you'd gain about 10 lbs! We are making that famous Coney Island hot dog sauce, a blackberry cobbler, homemade lemonade and all the trimmin's and having a bonfire that night under the stars. Should be absolutely wonderful!!! 
