We pressed apples very late this year, but we managed to get it all done before the snow started to fly. The work is hard – physical and cold and a bit noisy – but there is nothing like it and we are pretty moved by the event every year. It is sort of a whole body experience with everything engaged – muscles, senses, and mental energy. Without a doubt, the work is entirely framed by the place and the machine. Our press barn is up on the orchard and overlooks the Pioneer Valley and Connecticut River. The view is stunning and the back of the barn opens up and lets that view in while we press (and a bit of wind too but it is generally worth it). The machine is a century old and is truly a beautiful contraption of gears and cogs and hydraulics. Despite its age, there is an efficiency to it that I am taken with every year. We unload apples, send them up the elevator, grind them onto the racks and cloths, stack them, press them, and unload them. The carts that hold the presses have big iron wheels and there is a hook and arm that swings the cart back to the loading side that is simply ingenious. Here, have a look:
This is the bin tipper. The bin gets winched up and the apples fall onto a slatted sorting table before dropping into the hopper that carries them up the elevator.
The apples tumbling out of the bin towards the hopper.
The apples go up the elevator and drop into the grinder, which is up on the third level of the barn. At the top of this image there is a stainless steel box, which is the bottom of the grinder. The ground apples fall through that plastic chute onto the racks and press cloths shown here.
The ground apples on the rack and cloth. We make 6 “cheeses” per press cycle.
They get wrapped up before the next rack and cloth get filled.
After all 6 are done, the cart gets rolled under the pressing apparatus. The press lifts from the bottom and presses the cheeses against that square of wood at about 1000psi.
The juice begins to FLOW! Beautiful!
We dump the pomace out the back door into bins – sometimes we miss. This will go down to the pigs.
sweet.
This work is so much different from anything else I do in my work life, which is mostly creative. Though a great deal of creativity went into the design of this machine, and the updates that Jonathan made are most certainly the fruit of some seriously creative thinking, mostly we move within a system and it requires efficiency – economy of movement and rhythm. I enjoy how I am plugged into this system and I am allowed to think or NOT, while controlling the elevator, lifting the racks, breathing the apple spray, engaging and monitoring the hydraulics, and keeping a flow of action so we can press our daily goal (usually around 375 gallons). I doubt that I would enjoy factory work every day, but this little taste of being a part of a several person machine (not to mention the machine itself) is pretty awesome. Working hard feels good. Being tired at the end of the day often feels good too. Pressing apple juice for our cider feels very good. I count myself lucky to be doing something like this in such a ridiculously beautiful spot (with the love of my life) – it isn’t lost on me ever.
-Nicole
carr's ciderhouse 