Gardening From Scratch

Making Apple Juice

apple Juice 01 Apple juice! With 60 gallons of apples harvested, we set up to process all of them into juice using an antique apple press today. apple Juice 09 The tractor pallet that Peter built is used to wash the apples on the tractor outside. Larry brings clean bucketfuls to the chopping/sorting table for Linda and me.

Preparing the Apples

apple Juice 11 We are chopping them in half, removing bruises, and bad spots then putting them in a bucket for the guys on press next.

All of us are looking for unwanted residents like this little guy. Now, I have to look him up and see what we need to do differently next year to keep our orchard trees healthy and make him unwelcome.

Apple Press Trial 08 — Apples after crushing.

One guy picks up a bucket of chopped apples and pours them into the hopper for the grinder while the other guy cranks the wheel on the side. When the grinder finishes crushing the apples into the catch bin, it is slid over to the press side.

Apple Press Trial 10 — Folding mesh over the top.

The filter mesh is folded over the top of the mash, then 2 wooden covers are placed on top, and the press is set.

Pressing starts with turning the green wheel on top by hand until it is tight. Then switch to using a “stick” for leverage to squeeze all the juice out. It is lots, and lots of muscle-building exercises, believe me!

apple Juice 12 We prepared for the juice storage by purchasing distilled water 1-gallon jugs and emptying the water out. Washed milk cartons work well too. There are a lot of rules about the proper way to store fresh juices, so please be careful. This day resulted in XX gallons of apple juice.

fresh not pasteurized (lasts about 5 days in the fridge)
frozen (lasts 6 months – only fill 3/4 full)
canned pasteurized quart jars (lasts 1 year)

All of us went to bed early instead of staying up to play cards together. Harvest is such a lovely time of the year!

Apple Harvest

apple Juice 08 Apple Harvest! The apples have started to fall to the ground by themselves so, we called friends and family to help harvest all of them. Our dear friends, Larry and Linda Pointer answered our call for help.

apple Juice 01 All of us picked apples in the morning resulting in 60 gallons of apples harvested this year. There is a half-water barrel and 9 buckets full of apples to put on the tractor. apple Juice 02 You can see what that many apples look like with Larry, Pete, and Max just outside of the garden.

apple Juice 08 Our trial run with Rachel and her boys (grandkids) last week showed us that the trough underneath the press created a leak at the spout. A modification was needed so the juice would not creep back underneath the spout missing the bucket set under it. You can see more about what I am talking about and the makeshift repair (tin foil) that we used in this previous post.

Hopefully, we are all set up and ready to get to work. Pete has made the modification it needed, then checked, and lubed it all up. So, here we go!

Can’t wait to taste the best fresh juice on the planet from our apple harvest 2022.

Apple Press

apple press

I was very lucky to find an apple press at an estate sale this summer. It is a refurbished antique 1872 Whitman’s Americus. The price made me groan a little, but, we are very anxious to make cider now. We scheduled a small get-together at our house to pick apples and try out the “new-to-us” press. On Saturday our daughter & grandkids and friends helped pick 12 gallons of apples (2 five-gallon buckets of Macintosh & 2 gallons of Honeycrisp). 12 gallons of apples made 3 gallons of delicious cider.

We have to wash the apples and at least cut them in half or quarters. Everything has to be clean.

The catch bucket is lined with mesh to keep seeds and apple chunks inside and out of the juice. Then a bucket full of apples is poured into the hopper as another person starts to turn the gear that mashes them. By the way, turning this is a great form of aerobic exercise.

Next, we move the bucket of mashed apples to sit under the press mechanism. The mesh has to be folded over and a board cover is put on top. Then another piece of wood is placed between the descending press metal and the cover over the pulp.

Pressing starts with turning the wheel by hand till it gets hard to do. Then there is a piece of wood that looks kind of like a baseball bat, to help leverage it down tight in the end. This is another great form of aerobics.

The juice is absolutely delicious! There were three gallons of cider to split between us and what little pulp is left was dry and will be great in our compost. Actually, we put it on the ground and found many, many deer eating in the middle of the night when the dog was barking. By morning, the pile was gone. Totally gone, without a trace.

Apples Are Ready

apple Macintosh 003 The apples are ready on our three apple trees. The biggest is a mature “Macintosh”, which has a bumper crop this year. The branches are loaded and touching the ground, so picking needs to be done soon. There is a young “King” tree bearing for the first time this year. We also have a maturing “Honeycrisp” that has borne fruit for a couple of years, but this year it is loaded with fruit that is larger than your hand. Orchards are truly a test of a gardener’s patience. But, the fruit is so delicious that the wait and the work is totally worth it.