Apple Squeezing

The Gravensteins were ripe, falling to the ground. It was time to begin the picking.

It is not an easy task, picking a tree like this. Ladders and poles with picking baskets get you to most of them. Jake, Hank and Phoebe helped out.

 

Several hours of picking over a couple of days got us a fair number of apples.

Gravs don't keep, so you eat them right now, cook them or squeeze them. We did some cooking and eating, but the squeezing is the big job.

 

Our press is a homemade, picked up from a 2nd hand store 10 years ago or so. You can see it in action in the video below.

It has a shredder powered by a small electric motor. It is a fierce device. Apples go in whole, stems and all, and come out in bits. The PVC cylinders catch the chunks. When full they get slid down under the press, which is a screw jack. Tighten until it gushes, then let it finish.

It gets poured from the catch pan, through a sieve and a funnel, into clean water jugs. I don't use cleaned out milk jugs; I worry to much about the unpasturized juice and the possibility of something going wrong. So only clean, new jugs for me.

 

We squeezed over 12 gallons, and still had a bushel of apples to share with friends. The juice goes into the freezer, to be thawed out in October when the rest of the trees are ripe and we can do some blending.

The squeezed bits go back into the soil. The chickens are temporarily interested, but there are so many apples on the ground that they have their fill all fall.

I have a mixed relationship with squeezing apples. It is a lot of work to get the apples down, get enough to press, then store and clean up. This is such a busy time of year, and it is always HOT when it is time to pick.

But I am always glad that I did it. This year was made even better because both of the kids were home to help. Jake has been away for so long he has never squeezed apples. June has, but she has been traveling and living elsewhere, so we don't get a lot of time with both of them here. Having them, and our new friend Hank, there to help was the best part of the process.

 

Since neither Hank nor Jake had squeezed before, they had not tasted the fresh, raw juice. Gotta have a little tasting before the clean up. It was wonderful.

The ground is still littered with apples, slowly rotting. There are some left in the tree, including the ever tantalizing big ones out of reach at the top. The other trees' apples are still growing, the branches are straining and sometimes breaking. The press is cleaned up and put in the shed, until October, when the weather will be cooler, friends will gather, and more cider will be squeezed.

How Ya Like Dem...

 

...apples?

We are having an excellent apple year here in the Willamette Valley. I thought I would introduce you to some of our trees.  

These are my espalier trees. Espalier trees are grafted on dwarf rootstock, and are grown on wires or trellises.This keeps them short and easy to maintain. And since they are supported, you can have a lot of apples without breaking branches.

About 6 years ago, at our city house, I planted a row of 4 3-year-old trees. You can kinda see the shape of them in the photos above and below. I planted them close together, about 12' between each. Now that they are maturing I see I could have given them much more room, but mine will always be compact.

I put in 3 posts, and ran 4 lines of vinyard wire between them.

 

Above is a 6 way combination. I can't remember one of the varieties but the rest are Yellow Transparent, Yellow Delicious, Macintosh, Braeburn and Fuji. It is a fun way to get a lot of variety in a small area. The one below, and in the first few photos, is a Red Gravenstein. It is incredibly prolific, like its bigger cousin, and with the Transparent is just ripe now.

 

In addition to the Red Grav and the 6 Way Graft I have a Braeburn and a pear tree on the same wires. Nearby is the funny little fellow seen below. It is a dwarf Braeburn. 

Unlike the Espalier trees, this one is not supported. It is quite small, but can get a fair amount of fruit on it. So the branches bend to the ground, and it looks a little challenged. In retrospect I don't think I will ever get a dwarf tree that has to stand on its own. Semi-dwarfs work much better.

Then there are the big kids. Above is the other Grav. She is a full sized tree. And just as prolific as the little one. We don't get fruit on her every year, more like every three. But I love Gravs. They are green, with red striping, and really tart. The cook wonderfully.

I try to keep it fairly well trimmed for health, but tend to let the branches reach the ground. Just think of all those extra apples! Phoebe, being more practical and safety minded, likes it trimmed up so you can actually walk and mow under it. She took matters into her own hands this year, which is why it looks so nice.

We have two other big trees, a King (above) and one we call the Mystery. It is so named because the old guys at the apple fair could not figure out what it is. Maybe it is a cross that only exists here.

One of the challenges of big trees is pruning them. I don't have a safe way to get to the top of the trees, so I cannot easily lighten the load on the limbs. As you can see in the above photo, there are some dead leaves, indicating a branch that has broken off. And in the upper left/center area you can see a limb that cracked. I can't get up there, so figure I am letting the tree self prune. Maybe not the best I can do, but it is what I can do now.

 

The King and Mystery ripen in October. So these apples have a long way to go to be ready to eat. When we have a bumper crop like this, we can have our Cider Pressing Party. It is a great event, one we have not had in several years. If we pull it off this year, you can read about it in October.

The $18,000 Sandwich, or What We Did For Summer Vacation

 

We are off on our annual break from Homesteading. Summer vacation. But...

It started off a little more exciting than we wanted. Phoebe ate a Deli sandwich on the drive south and ended up in not one, but two hospitals with a major case of food poisoning.

But we have rallied and have been having an increasingly better time.
Here are few of the sights we have enjoyed this trip.

Crater Lake

Fireworks in Healdsburg, CA

SanFran Naked Man

Redwoods

Grants Pass, OR

Naughty Homesteaders

Shame on us.

We are living up to our reputation as the Reluctant Homesteaders.

Instead of saving our pennies to buy a tractor, we have higgledy-piggledy-willy-nilly purchased ourselves a couple of old Honda Trail CT90's. Mine is a 1970 and Buck's is a '86.

This summer I mandated that some fun was in order after our long slog this year, so, much to our children's chagrin, we took our trailer on a trip around Oregon and bought his and hers MOTORCYCLES!!!

For those who are not familiar with the beloved Honda CT90, it is an on and off road bike that has an automatic clutch. There is a switch on the transmission which allows you to switch from a very low, off road set of four gears to a high set of four, which are suited to local roads. Top speed for these puppies is 45.
I grew up riding these great old bikes, but Buck is new to the concept. He's already had one hilarious adventure across the road and through the field.

Despite these photos we are being very good about wearing our helmets. We will be taking our Safety Class at the end of the month so that we can ride them on the road.

Lumberjackin'

We had a tree that was felled a few years ago. We thought we might like it as a landscape feature, but decided it was not going to work out.

First we cleared away the berries and brambles. I had rented a saw with a 28 inch bar to get through the thick end.  

I also had help. My son joined me with our newest farm-mate, Hank, a college friend of his who has come up to the NW to try a new direction. It was the first time for both of them being lumberjacks.

The tree had to come down because it was rotted inside. The first 10' or so was hollow. The edges were good, but the center was gone.

Pretty soon we got into full, solid rounds.

 

The boys spelled me with the saw. It takes a long time to get through wood this diameter and I wore out after a couple of hours.

 

It was their first time using a saw, but it seemed like a good time to learn. A saw like that handles like a Cadillac at 70 on a straight road. More training will be necessary before they are ready to use a smaller saw in the woods, but they did great.

A problem came as we got a little ways up the trunk. The further we went, the deeper the log was sunk in the dirt. We figured there was a lot of whiplash as it fell, causing the top to slam harder in the ground, sinking it deeper.

The worst thing for a saw chain is hitting dirt. I am not sure why it can chew through solid wood easily but goes dull at the slightest contact with soil. (If you know, fill me in.)

With a 28 inch bar and the wood 6" deep in the dirt, I was having a hard time making a clean cut without ruining the chain. I had a backup chain, but a lot of wood to get through and a long ride to the rental shop if it went dull.

After conferring with Phoebe and the boys we decided on a strategy. We grabbed a 4X4 for leverage, and some timbers to pry against. An adz was used to clear out the dirt from one side. 

I cut several rounds 3/4 through, stopping before I got near the dirt. Then we carefully dug one out and made a full cut.

 

We wedged the beam in and pried.

It took a fair amount of levering but we were able to roll the log a quarter turn and finish the cut safely above the dirt. It was an old school approach, and really satisfying to have such simple thing work so well.

The boys used a splitting maul and wedge to beak the rounds into manageable chunks. We will finish the splitting this fall, once the weather cools a bit and it is nice and dry.

 

It was really gratifying to do the work, made even more so by spending time working with the boys. It has been far too long since Jake was at home, and we are enjoying getting to know Hank.

Beauty Is In the Details

The "Art Shack" Micro House project continues.

I ended up using some "click lock" laminate we already owned, on the floor. It's very practical and I like the way it looks against the rustic wood.

 

Instead of having insulation under the building, which would inevitably end up full of mice or squirrels, I laid the flooring over that space-blanket-bubble-wrap stuff they sell in rolls for other kinds of insulating.

 

 I don't think any manufacturer would recommend this, but I did it anyway and it worked fantastically. It has a little more koosh than normal underlayment, but it made the floor a lot warmer than it was without it. I was worried about the flooring flexing too much and coming "unlocked" but after a month of use there has been no sign of any such malfunction.

That's the fun of doing a project like this. The worst that could happen is I would have to take up the flooring and re-lay it. About two hours worth of work. The small scale of it all makes it so easy to take chances and experiment.

These light fixtures were a birthday present from my super cool mother-in-law, who wholeheartedly supports anything called an "Art Shack".

 

I had a long debate about the best light bulb for the fixtures.

Edison bulb, which was so cool to look at, but was better at making heat than light.

Standard bulb, which was making me see dots everywhere, like a camera flash

Half Chrome bulb, Juuusst right.

I decided on the "Half Chrome" which were much easier on the eyes.

 

I put together these unrelated Ikea items to make a desk area. Its a shelf with drawers, mounted over what is actually a shoe cabinet.

 

I bought these adjustable bar stools from Overstock dot com. They are actually very comfortable and have a very small footprint on the floor. They also don't take up a lot of space visually.

Buck and I have actually been staying in the Oasis / Art Shack now and then to test it out and every time we do, it gets more comfortable and fun.
I move the furniture around a lot and add and subtract items. I think I am getting close to a comfortable mix of Ikea, salvage and thrift store coziness.

The dogs have had an adjustment period too. They were sleeping in the Art Shack

but then they discovered a major Doggie feature in the Oasis trailer. It is the spacious, never-get-stepped-on-in-the-middle-of-the-night Dog Cabinet under the Human bed. 

They really love hanging out in there. It is just a little weird to wake up in the middle of the night to Mrs. B snoring under my pillow.