Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

Here in the Pilis hills the quince/ birs trees have had a stupendous year - positively chocka with fruit this year, probably the best I've ever seen in terms of quince ripening on the tree.

Instead of patting yourself for a job well done, you need to be thinking of your quince tree's health going forward. There are so many quince ripening that they are sure to break branches and even bring down big limbs of the tree.

So you need to get shaking. I have climbed up the tree and shaken down about 80% of our quinces. Not really that extreme - there are still many kilos of quinces to ripen, I'd guess 100 kilos minimum, it's a big old tree.

Not that we ever use them. My bro & sis in law come in and collect a few for quince jam come October. My neighbour has a standing permission to hop over the fence and get any remaining, he's 81 and he told me once that he can sell them in the market for a good price, I remember he said well over 1000 Ft/ kilo, could be misremembering of course.

Anyway, I have the choice of a broken & misshapen quince tree if I let it bear the full crop, or shaking down 80%. The remaining 20% will grow bigger in any case.

wolfi

If we'd live near you we'd come to harvest the birs alma!
We bring some every year to a German friend who makes Quittenspeck/Quittenkäse (no relation of course to bacon or cheese) - here's how it looks:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Quittenspeck.jpg
Don't know whether this is common in Britain ...
In Spain it's known as dulce de membrillo

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

Yep my sis in law makes that as well. Horses for courses of course but it seems if you love sugar, you'll love that & the quince element is an added bonus

wolfi

There's not too much sugar in there -for two kilos of quincw you just need one kilo of sugar - and no preservatives or other chemicals!
And the juice that is left makes a very nice jelly/marmalade!

A bit OT:
Have you realised how the price of sugar has plunged?
Some time ago it was over 300 HUF/kilo - now you often get it for less than 160 ...

PaulinEger

We only have 1 birs fa but this year it's full, more fruit than any previous year. Unfortunately, not enough to make pálinka so ourselves and neighbours will be eating lots of alma sajt.
Our ordinary apple tree, which is huge, too big actually, has also had a bumper crop. Unfortunately, 2 limbs broke off. I don't think it was down to weight of apples, more to do with a hole that collects water and is rotting the tree from in inside (I think). So far I've made about 200 litres of cefre with lots more apples yet to mash. Unfortunately, the machine that I use for mashing the apples broke on Friday so I'm waiting for it to be repaired as using the hand grinder is hard work.

wolfi

" cefre " Had to look this up - so it's Maische in German - the stuff that is distilled.
Do you have your own distillery apparatus?

PaulinEger

No, the whole process is very time consuming. I will probably consider it when I retire. For now I will pay someone to distill it for me (legally of course).