Tags
apple cider, apples, autumn, cider press, codling moth, desert gardening, fruit trees, greenhouse, organic gardening, pests, pressing cider, tomatoes, winter vegetables
This is not how it looks here in the Duke City:
There are none of these:
But neither is there any of this:
There is a little bit of this:
These tomatoes were outside the greenhouse, and just got nipped by an almost-didn’t-happen freeze a week ago. The ones in the greenhouse are fine:
Though in truth the greenhouse is not much of an insulator. What it does well is really warm up during the day, so winter veggies do great, but any hard freeze (the forecast next Saturday: 27 degrees) will invade the greenhouse during the night. Frankly, I’m ready for it, because I have these guys:
waiting for the tomatoes to die so I can plant them in the greenhouse.
But fall is here, and it is beautiful, and the apples are ready, so we picked the trees bare and pressed some cider.
Start with apples:
And the cider press, in this case a small one my mom bought me for my birthday many years ago (yay mom!). The press includes the grinder:
For crunching, mauling and otherwise damaging the fruit so it will give up the juice; and the barrel:
within which the fruit is pressed (note the wood blocks, which help with pressing); and the press mechanism itself:
Along with an assortment of bowls and containers.
Then we cut the apples into halves or quarters and remove the wormy bits.
Note: keeping the wormy bits in is a bad idea. They do contribute a distinctive flavor, but it is not a positive contribution. Tastes like dirt.
Then crush, mangle and otherwise destroy the apple sections in the grinder.
Then press out the juice.
Then drink. After several hours, turning two five gallon tubs of apples into just one gallon of cider, I thought, as I always do, that this is a stupid thing to do, until I took a sip. Then all the work was forgiven.