08/27/2026
If you ask anyone that has an apple tree or trees on their property, they will probably tell you that the fruit trees are loaded with apples. Some trees are so laden down with fruit that the entire limb is breaking or they are dragging to the ground. That was true of the transparent apple trees on the property this summer. Always called August apples because they ripen first in its namesake month, they are a super sweet apple that makes incredibly sweet apple sauce that requires no sugar added whatsoever. They are good for plucking off the tree and eating but, by far in a “Penney opinion”, is when they are made into apple pie.
Grampie Penney never met a pie he did not like. Penney’s like pie. All of Grampie Penney’s brothers were fans of pie and the sisters were expert pie makers. Aunt Mable at Sperry’s Restaurant in New Germany could make meringue that was heaped on top of coconut cream and lemon pies. She shared her secret but, somehow, the meringue is never quite the same as hers was. Grampie Penney always advised that more practice was needed whenever he was asked his opinion on a pie. (That way he would get more pie to eat.)
Why did the Penney’s of the fifth generation like pie so much? Apparently, their mother, Grammy Lois, could make pies that melted in the mouth. Pie was also often a meal. When one lives on a farm with ten living children and a husband to feed, pies were a frequent option. Grampie Penney said that often a meal for them was fresh bread and butter with pickles and, for him most importantly, pie. You can only imagine how much seven boys could eat. Grammy Lois baked bread daily, every day except Sunday in the old wood stove spring, summer, fall, and winter, no matter what the temperature was outside. She also baked pies every day. All summer long apples were peeled and sliced. Then the slices were threaded with a darning needle on a string and hung to dry up overhead of the kitchen in the attic, to be fetched down and unstrung to be turned into pies. There were no freezers for preservation. One either dried, pickled, and bottled fruits and vegetables through the summer to have for winter use. Women worked non-stop during the summer months to “put food away” for winter.
We are lucky enough to have freezers and, currently, ours are filling with blueberries and August applesauce. There are more than a few pies already made, ready for baking and winter eating. When making pies, a package of lard makes enough crust for three pies with a top. For the sixth generation growing up in the world of “waste not, want not”, the last bit of leftover crust was used to either make a pie crust to use to make coconut cream or lemon pie. Grammie Penney also made banana cream pie with that being a special treat as bananas were not all that common to have back in the day. She also made butterscotch pies, custard pies, and every once in a while, a chocolate pie. Her other method of using up all the dough was to make what she called a “dump pie”. The crust was rolled out and put in the pie plate. The fruit was added with all the other ingredients (sugar, butter because it makes everything taste better, flour to thicken the juices a bit, and for apple pie either nutmeg or cinnamon was added). The bottom crust was not trimmed with a paring knife but was folded up over the filling willy-nilly (an older English expression that comes from the Old English word “wyllan” that meant to wish or want and Old English “nyllan”, a combination of “ne” = not + “wyllan” = to wish, thus meaning will someone want to or not. Over time, it became “will he, nil he” or willy-nilly that evolved to mean something random or disorganized today) however far the dough went. This dump pie that was recently made did not make it into a freezer. You can imagine where it went.
