Making apple cider

Lady apple tree - this is the tree before we started picking the apples.

Over the weekend, we picked over 300 lbs of apples. I know it was this much, because I weighed just one of the many boxes we picked and it was over 55 lbs. We picked six of these for apple cider and a few more smaller boxes for eating, storage, giving away and baking.

Red delicious on the tree

On Monday, I left work early to pick up the rented cider mill/press at a home brew supply store on the other side of Portland. The press is clearly homemade by someone, and it's got a mill on one side of the frame (where the apples get pulverized) and a press on the other side of the frame. It came with two 'barrels' so that we could be milling and pressing at the same time.

Set up to start milling (the second barrel was sitting to the side)


Apples being washed

We started by washing all the apples. We had 4 varieties that were going to go into this cider, so I tried to make sure that each batch had some of each. This turned out to be more important than I had originally thought because as it turns out, a variety of apple sizes in each load helped keep the mill working smoothly (I faced a few jams prior to figuring this out).

The hopper loaded up - this did not work, apples had to be fed in a group of 3-4 with only one going in at a time or the mill would jam.

Basically, I was feeding the mill and my H was doing the pressing. He also washed the apples, ran the used pulp to the compost pile and filled the containers (using a strainer) with cider in between pressing loads. It took a lot longer to mill one barrel worth of apples than it did to press it, so his undying movement kept the process running smoothly. The mill had a wooden box with a round hole cut in the top that fit over the top of the hopper. My original plan was to skip this box so that I could put the apples in faster than just one at a time. Yeah, not gonna happen. This mill spit apple guts EVERYWHERE! Seriously! Without that box, I would have been inches thick in apple guts. As it was, I had it in my hair, on my face, and all down my legs below my knees (where the bottom of the mill was). As you can see from the pictures, we also had apple guts all over the porch, the boxes, the press itself...we even saw a few pieces fly up onto the roof! What a mess!

Me - feeding apples into the hopper.



Apple cider flowing from the press - note the apple guts everywhere!



My H working the press.

Once we'd done this for about 2 hours, we took a break to warm up and get something to eat. We resumed work not long after and set a goal of getting all the apples done. We filled up a 5 gallon container we'd bought specifically for this, a 1 gallon plastic jug, 3 half gallon ball jars, and half a cooler. The plan was to use all the cider in the cooler to fill freezer bags to save for long term. Fresh un-pasturized cider will keep for about a year if frozen. It will keep in the fridge for about a week before it starts to ferment. Our plan is to keep some frozen, give some away, drink a ton and ferment a container or two. All in all, we got more than 11 gallons of cider from our 300 + lbs of apples.

The last little oddity about this event is our hands...mine in particular. They are stained! When I first noticed it, my hands were kind of red, but I assumed it was mostly from being wet and cold. Then, after I washed them (and warmed up), I noticed that they were kind of a light brown. By the end of the evening (after showering and scrubbing), they were darker brown! Even today, two days later, they are still discolored - my hands look like they are dirty. Weird, huh? So if anyone is thinking of making their own cider - I would recommend wearing gloves of some sort!

It's not as obvious in this photo - but my hands (particularly my fingers) are stained from the apples!

Oh...and I should mention that the cider is absolutely delicious!!

Finished cider in a ball jar.

It's been a busy 24 hours...

So we self-diagnosed Sass's illness as bloat and began treating it as such. I had already put in for a half day yesterday because we reserved an apple cider mill/press for the second half of the day. I left at noon, went to pick it up on the other side of Portland, stopped to get bloat medication at the farm store on my way home and get home around 2:30. Sass is still no better but she is walking around and severe bloat will leave the animal unable to walk. We administer the new meds and it doesn't help. I get out my phone and start calling around until I find a vet that treats goats. The vet is 30 min from us and is closing in 30 min. The doc agrees to stick around and we get Sass into the truck and my H takes her down there.

Meanwhile, I lug the apple press onto the back deck and set about washing the 300 lbs of apples we had picked over the weekend. Then I find out that the mill part of the press isn't working. I call the store and they are of no help. They offer to fix it when I bring it back and not charge me, but the next day that it's available is after I'm already in China (and our apples would never make it that long). I'm PISSED. I call my mom to bitch and I can barely hear her because Buddy (the other goat) is crying at the top of his lungs. He's been doing this constantly since we took Sass away. He hates to be alone! Anyway, while I'm bitching to my mom that all our apple-picking work this weekend was going to go to waste, my H calls from the vet. Sass doesn't have bloat, she's got a rumen imbalance (I forget the technical name) and is severely dehydrated - 70% chance she'll live. They are giving her all kinds of treatments (well, making Rick do a lot of it so he'll learn) and she's being a trooper.

He gets home with her around 6 pm. We put Sass back in with Buddy and look over the huge BAG of medication we have to administer over the next few days. $178 later - she *might* survive. And hell, we only paid $100 for her! Not that it matters - she is our responsiblity now, and we will do what we can to both ease her suffering and to save her. Oh, and the vet said that it's highly likely that she is pregnant, too.

So now my H takes a look at the cider mill, tightens one screw, and it's good to go! (can you read the frustration in my words at the time I've now wasted?) We start processing apples (I'll explain in a separate post) and about 2 hours later, take a break for dinner. We have a quick dinner of leftovers and then get back to work. By 9:30, we've done all the apples and we are both frozen solid. The mill spits apple guts EVERYWHERE, and I'm covered with it. My H is frozen from washing the batches of apples in ice cold hose water. We are both soaking wet, too (him with water, me with apple juice). We washed everything off, and put the cider inside. Now I'm standing in the laundry room, covered with apple, so I strip off my clothes and throw them in the washer so as not to trapse apples through the house.

I take a quick shower and crawl into bed.

This morning, my alarm doesn't go off. I awake to my H's alarm set for 7 am (a full hour and 15 min later than my alarm was set for!). I get up and immediately start calculating what things I can do and what I have to skip because the plan was to leave the house by 7:30 am to get into Portland by 8:30 to return the mill/press and get back to work by 9:30. Anyway, I'm getting things set for milking in the kitchen when I decide to throw the items in the washer into the dryer. Oh look...there's my cell phone! It had been in my back pocket because of the goat situation and it went into the washer when I was covered with apples. Great.

I go out to milk Sass and she appears to be a little better. She's munching on some hay and she greeted me. She didn't want to get on the milking stand, but I'm sure that was because we'd used it to administer therabloat yesterday and she was not a fan of that. I got her up there and while she didn't want any of the goat chow, she did stand still so that I could milk her. We got very little milk and it was kind of yellow in color. I dumped it (we had planned on that) but we wanted to keep milking her so that she was comfortable.

We load the apple mill/press into the car, I get dressed and I head to Portland only a half hour behind schedule. I actually ended up making it to work by 10 am and luckily I didn't miss anything. I couldn't even call my boss to tell him I'd be late because I have no phone! I'll have to run by the shop on my lunch break to see if they offer any warranties for idiots like me.

Anyway, Sass is doing a little better. My H is home with her again today, so he'll give her today's medications. Tomorrow, I'll have to do it because he'll be traveling for work, but we are hopeful that she'll be ok. Phew.

Craziness reigns supreme again

What madness my life has become...

I was super busy all last week and never got time to post here. I had a mini-breakdown on Wednesday night (freaking out about everything I had to do) but then got busy and made Cinnamon Grape Preserves that evening. They turned out tasty and beautiful, but they did not gel properly. Ugh. I do have directions for fixing it...so I'll give that a shot later this week.

On Thursday, I did exactly nothing towards our 'farm life' outside of normal chores and doing some reading. We went out for sushi and just relaxed a bit. It was nice to forget that we've got new responsibilities for a little while. While we were at home watching the World Series, I did some reading about building farm structures, composting and wine making.

By Friday, we were prepping for the weekend again. On Saturday we were up eary to run some errands before picking up our local pork/beef CSA share. Turns out, they had to cancel the pick-up but we didn't know about it because I didn't have email access on Friday night. Bummer. We were able to pick up a few supplies though. We needed some pieces to reinstall the front gutter after the construction work and we needed some type of container in which to put our apple cider when we make it. We spent the afternoon free ranging the chickens, spending some time with the goats, harvesting the last of the carrots (the parsnips were planted too late and didn't develop), cleaning out the chicken coop and moving it and various other little tasks.

Sunday was apple day. We spent the entire day picking and sorting apples. We picked over 300 lbs of apples - most for cider but some for storage and cooking. As it turns out, one of the varieties on our property is a very old heritage strain. It's called a Lady apple and it's apparently one of the oldest apple varieties in the US. It's also a good keeper, so we set aside a box of these for storage. They are small, sweet apples, and Sassy's favorite. In fact, as we were picking, we let Sass and Buddy out to munch on the ones we dropped. Turns out, that was a bad idea, but I'll get to that in a minute. We also picked a couple of boxes of red delicious, a box of the tiny apple and a box of a late variety that I have not used for anything just yet. There were TONS of this particular apples, so after we do the cider, I'm going to can a bunch of these. I will be picking up the cider mill/press in about a hour and then we'll set to work with it this afternoon. I wasn't sure how much cider we will get from the apples we picked, but after we had picked them, I went online and did a little research. My calculations (totally an estimate because type of apple, temperature, type of press, season, etc all affect juice quanitity) tell me that the 300 lbs we have will give us about 25 gallons of cider. OOPS. I had no idea we'd get so much!! We do NOT have containers for 25 gallons...not by a long shot! This should be an interesting evening.

Anyway, this morning when I went to milk Sass, she was acting odd. She did not greet me at the gate like usual. She was standing still with her head down, clearly not feeling well. I tried to see if she'd respond to me at all, and she kept walking away from me. I decided that I had to at least get the milk out of her, so I led her onto the stand and while she burped and refused food, I quickly milked her. I heard no activity from her rumen (usually she gurgles about once a minute or so). Her milk production was way down, too. I gave her fresh water and went in to find my H. I explained her symptoms to him, got ready for work and headed out. He was working from home today and was going to check on her. After a little research, we are certain that she has bloat. Too many apples and now her rumen is off! We think it's still a mild case, so he started with walking her around, massaging her stomach, and helping her burp. He's also given her a mixture of karo syrup and corn oil to help her better release the gas. When I go pick up the cider press, I'm stopping at the farm store to buy a horse syringe and some medication. Poor Sasafras! I feel so badly, for her...she's obviously miserable and if we can't help her release the built up gas, it could kill her. I don't think she's that bad yet though.

I'll post an update later this evening or tomorrow (hopefully with good news). Think good thoughts for our sweet Sass, will you?

We gave the dogs baths on Sunday night. Charlie usually gets cold, so he wanted to lie on the moving blanket. We tossed the top of the blanket over him to keep him warm and next thing we know, Kitty had made himself at home on top of Charlie!

Yesterday was a day of good things happening.

First of all, our lye arrived. I ordered 4 lbs of NaOH (lye) to use to make goat's milk soap from a farm/distributor in Arizona. It arrived yesterday, so I'm excited to add soap making to our list of accomplishments sometime in the near future. My H also ordered some from a CA place, and that should arrive later this week as well.

Secondly, yesterday was the day that Sassafras should have been showing signs of estrus. Not only did her milk production not dip like it usually does during this time, but she wasn't acting in her usual way. I think we may have a pregnant goat on our hands! I'm going to keep track and watch her for one more cycle, just to be sure...but we may be expecting baby goats next March. Awwww!

Thirdly, I have secured an apple cider mill/press for us!! I called a local home brewery/winemaking supply place and they have a press that they rent out. They only have one, so it's usually very, very booked up this time of year. I got lucky and managed to get it for next Monday. It's only $20 for the day, and we should be able to press all our left over apples in no time! All we have to do now is 1) pick them all this weekend and 2) locate containers to put it all in...

Lastly, I prepped a meal for tonight that is one step closer to being a 100 ft meal. It's actually about a 50 mile meal. I am making a baked pork with apple raisin stuffing dish. The pork grew up (fed on organic grass) about 10 miles from us. The apples and raisins are from our yard. The bread was from a stuffing mix from Bob's Red Mill which is local to the Portland area. The only thing that isn't local is the beef broth - and I used only a half cup of it...so it's not too bad. I'll be serving it with zucchini from our garden. Hopefully, it'll taste as good as it sounds when I read the recipe!!