Good friends of ours invited us over to witness their first ever apple harvest and pressing. Ok, I brazenly invited my family over and they graciously accepted! I had to see their new apple press in action.
First, they set out to pick a variety of apple types from the orchard.
They got the whole family involved (this brought up the obligatory discussion about the fact that children CAN work on the farm as long as it’s a family farm and they are not operating heavy equipment). Thus, the nascent ‘family’ farmers got to work legally picking, washing, dropping apples into the press and working the wheel.
Once the apples were ground, the shavings/pulp go into the vat below, which is lined with a cloth, sieve-like bag. Now it’s time to press!
With a little adult supervision.
The big red lid is lowered over the vat with the apple pulp and pressed down until it squeezes all the juice out of the apples.
Lowering this top took a little longer than expected. Here it is 5 minutes later…
But we got some serious yield. Enough to all have a glass of juice and to store many mason jars full of the nectar for later use. The vat below was more than half full when we finished.
And everyone who participated got an extra bonus – fresh apples off the trees!
It is always so inspiring to see what people are doing on their land and subsequently in their kitchens. A big thank you to Johan and Emily for showing us their ‘operation’.
Last note: there was a huge response to the call for names of our new feral cat. And the winner is….??????
GINGER!
Here are the results:
Ginger (48) Juliet (5) Jitters (1)
Loved all the suggestions. Thank you for ‘voting’!