Singing Frogs Farm Hosts Old Fashioned Apple Press Party!

Apple season has just begun, and with the plethora of apples a single tree can produce, many backyard gardeners find themselves inundated with the delicious fruit. One of the most fun and delectable ways to preserve this bounty is through pressing your apples to make apple cider! At Singing Frogs Farm, we recently did just that, with the help of a dozen families from within our CSA community.

One of our friends, neighbors and CSA Members, Cordel, owns an 1872 hand crank apple press which he and his father restored back in the 60s. Since then, Cordel has pressed his own apple cider every year, and this year, he shared his beautiful machine with our community.

On Sunday, more than a dozen families gathered under the shade of our Oak Woodland at Singing Frogs Farm, and with over 1,000 pounds of local Gravenstein apples at the ready, began pressing our first juice of the season. The apples are placed in a large wash tub filled with water to rinse off any dust, dirt or other detritus. From the tub, apples are placed into the top of the cider press where one person is busily cranking the gears that shred the apples into small pieces as they fall through the machine into a wooden bucket.

Once the bucket is full of shredded apples, it is slid to the front of the machine and replaced by an empty wooden bucket to keep shredding more apples! At the front of the machine, a wooden lid is placed on the full bucket and a hand crank allows a large screw to put downward pressure on the bucket. As more and more pressure is applied through the hand cranked screw and wooden lid, the shredded apple pieces part with their aromatic golden juice. The juice runs down through the wooden slat bottom of the bucket and pours along a metal tray, over the edge, and through a cheese cloth into a metal cook pot. Once the pot is full of juice, the cheese cloth is removed and the juice is ladled into glass jars and storage containers – if it isn’t drunk right away straight out of the pot!

We love drinking the local, bottled Gravenstein Apple Cider available at Andy’s and other grocery stores, but the taste and texture of truly fresh apple cider is incomparable. With the fresh juice full of rich nutrients that haven’t separated out yet and with all the gasses and foam from the pressing process, the delectable taste and feeling of fresh apple cider coursing across your lips and tongue is truly ambrosia.

Another great part about pressing apple cider is that it can also be frozen for drinking at a later date such as during your holiday feasts and gatherings. Make sure to leave some head room in the container as the juice will expand when it freezes.

As the local Gravensteins are one of the first to burst forth with their fruit, the apple season has only just begun. With another 2 or 3 months of local apple harvest ahead of us (plus another few months of storage apples), there’s plenty of time to press your own cider from locally grown apples. You can rent an apple press from Sebastopol Ace Hardware and other locations, or search out an apple press owner through craigslist or waccobb.net. Often, apples are readily available for gleaning in various neighborhoods, as long as you ask permission first, or, you can support a local apple grower such as Walker Apples or Kozlowski and buy entire cases of apples at a wonderfully discounted wholesale price.

Finding the resources to make your own Cider Press Party happen is only the beginning of the fun you and your family will have making your very own Apple Cider this season!

(c) 2011 Paul Kaiser

Paul Kaiser served in the Peace Corps in The Gambia, West Africa.  He worked with several  rural agrarian communities to develop sustainable land use management systems that incorporated multi-purpose trees in the farm fields and gardens for soil replenishment and protection, biodiversity promotion, and household products such as fuel wood, timber, fruits, leaves, animal fodder, etc.  Since then, Paul earned dual Masters Degrees in Natural Resources Management and Sustainable Development from the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica and the American University in Washington D.C.  In the last four years, Paul and his wife Elizabeth have married sustainable land management with local food production at their biodiverse and family-friendly Singing Frogs Farm.  In addition, Paul created his “Night Heron Woodworks” business, where this accomplished furniture maker sells hand-crafted, salvaged hard wood pieces.