Interactive lesson

Fruit-processing plan, step by step

Interactive lesson: how much fruit the family eats, how many jars, kilos and trees that comes to, and how to spread the work over the season.

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The whole lesson as text

1. Three sources of fruit

The family's fruit doesn't come only from jars: the plan starts with fresh fruit and the store.

Fresh, store, processing — Fruit comes from three sources: fresh from the orchard, from the store and from processing. Processing is not the only one.
Fresh from the orchard — From June to October: strawberries, cherries, currants, plums, early apples, pears and blackberries.
Apples in the store — Late-keeping apples, pears and quinces last from October to March. A fresh apple in January is worth more than three jars of bottled fruit.
Processing for the rest — Fruit butter, jam, bottled fruit, juice, dried fruit and vinegar cover the rest of the year.

Why: The orchard crops all at once, but the family eats all year. In a good year fruit rots under the trees, and in March tinned fruit is bought in the shop. A plan knows what comes first, how much of everything you need and where to stop.

The more late apples and pears you keep in the store, the fewer jars you need.
Each kind of fruit has two or three weeks when it has to be picked and processed.

2. What the family eats

Don't plan jars first, plan meals and habits.

Meals, not jars — How many times a week do you have toast with jam for breakfast? How much juice do the children drink? Is there bottled fruit with Sunday lunch?
Count in AE — An adult is 1 AE, a child of 7–14 is 0.7, a child up to 6 is 0.4. Two adults and two children aged 10 and 4: 3.1 AE.
75 kg per AE — An adult eats roughly 75 kg (165 lb) of fruit a year (60–90 kg), fresh and processed.
Weekly in winter — Roughly per AE: fruit butter and jam 0.2–0.3 jars of 0.37 L, bottled fruit 0.2–0.3 jars of 0.72 L, juice 0.3–0.6 L.

Why: One weekly menu for January tells you more than any table. Real consumption can be half or double the average, so start from your own family.

If the family eats fruit butter and jam all year, count 52 weeks instead of 30.
The rough amounts are for a family that eats breakfast and cooks at home.