Unstuffed: This Cider House Totally Rules!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

This Cider House Totally Rules!

For the second year in a row, I've had the great good fortune of being invited to a friend's cottage to pick apples and press some cider!

There are quite a few apple trees growing near the cottage, so the group went out on Saturday afternoon to gather apples.

The best way to get the apples down, was to climb up the tree and give it a good shake.

A hook over a sturdy branch and apple pickers work well too.

Once our baskets were full we brought them back for cleaning, sorting and pressing, most of which happened on Sunday.

After the apples have been cleaned, sorted and the really rotten and wormy bits cut out, they go into the hopper for grinding. This sweet set-up has a DIY electric grinder, set over a hand turned grinder for maximum crushing action.

The crushed apples go through the grinders into a big, plastic garbage pail set underneath.

Once the pail is full enough, the crushed apples go into the press.

The wooden blocks are assembled....

...and the pressing begins!

Mmm....delicious cider! We all got to take some home and we filled a giant carboy that our gracious host plans to turn into hard cider.

Some of the cider crew.

In between pressings there was time to take in the beautiful view.

What a fabulous weekend with a truly wonderful group of folks!

3 comments:

Craig said...: Great post Amber. Glad you and the ADG could make it up.; September 24, 2011 at 1:24 PM
TechChik said...: Hi Amber! I'm jealous! :)
I've been looking into planting a few apple trees for future cider use. Any idea on which varieties are best?; September 25, 2011 at 10:32 AM
Amber said...: Oh my gosh, it was such a beautiful weekend and sooo much fun. Thank you thank you for having us Craig!!

TechChik, from my limited knoweledge of cidering, the best tasting cider comes from using a number of different varieties. You can use any kind of apple, although there are specific kinds breed especially for cidering.; September 27, 2011 at 12:06 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali