September 14, 2021 by Maggie McNeill
It's harvest time again, and that means processing fruit! The heat wave stunted our blackberries and plums, so I only got enough of the former for a few bowls of berries with cream, and enough of the latter to make a plum cobbler and two jars of jam. But the fruit we did get of both was wonderfully juicy and sweet. The apples, on the other hand, appear to have done quite well; last week Chekhov gathered a whole cart full of them, and after I culled out the bad ones I still had enough that, after coring, filled the three big bowls you see here plus one of my extra-large stock pots. After pulping it all fit into the three bowls, and I was able to press about 6 liters of juice from all that. So I've got a carboy fermenting into cider in the dark, cool, under-stair cupboard, and two mason jars of fresh juice in the fridge (well, one now, because the fresh stuff is so much better than store-bought apple juice it's almost like a different thing). There are still plenty of apples on the trees, so I plan to keep gathering and pressing until there aren't, and I hope to get at least two more carboys of cider plus enough to make four to six jars of apple butter; I hadn't made it before last year, and it came out so well I kicked myself for only doing two jars. After pressing, we mix the resulting pomace into the feed for Shiloh and Jonathan, but as you can see, Cicero prefers his fresh (and seems quite happy with cores).
