Apple Grinder Table

Simple, sturdy, ugly grinder table. No more saw horses for me!

It's not quite all the way done. I have to go find some bolts and thumb screws to hold it in place. I wanted it to be semi-portable so the grinder has to come off the table easily and transported separately.

The shelf that the bucket is sitting on isn't attached, either. Since we lend all the equipment out I wanted to let people use taller buckets if that's what they have. I like using the stock bucket because it's wider at the top which means it catches the apple grindings easily. It also pours better than a standard plastic food storage bucket.

I've got to be able to move the press, the grinder, and the table myself. No small feat since the press is solid maple and weighs a ton! But I can move the press with a hand truck, so it's not a big problem.

Wednesday I'm scheduled to make cider for the 3rd grade at the local charter school. They just learned about simple machines, now they get to see some in action!

It will be a fun addition to their Halloween party!

Cider Making 2011

We've been making cider for the last two weeks. Most of the cider-making has been helping friends make their apples into cider.

We pressed in the garage this year because most of the families ended up coming in the evening (after dar) to press. The garage has lights and we can shut the door to keep it a little warmer. We helped 6 families press cider this year, and did 6 or 7 bushel of our own.

Here are a few of the good ideas we came up with this year.

Free apples! Another 8 bushel came after I took this photo. We pressed about 30 bushels of apples Saturday afternoon.

Hubby cut a hole in his work bench so that the grinder would sit on top. It was a great height for anyone about 6' tall. Some of us that are a little shorter had to stand on paint cans. 

The garbage bag was placed under the grinder to provide a chute for the apple pieces. It worked very well and we'll be doing it again the next time we press. The plastic tote wasn't the best idea, we ended up using one of the green oval tubs (you can see the tub in one of the later photos) instead. The one in the photo above ended up breaking at the handle because it wasn't flexible and it wasn't strong enough to hold a bushel of ground apples. 

Another shot of the grinder set-up this year. We also put some old towels under the grinder area to make clean up easier. An old tarp would have been better, but we didn't have one handy. 

"I wanna try!" Yup! They all want to try the grinder! At least for a few minutes. It's hard work and Vet2Be lasted the longest.

We borrowed Sheepy's press, too (that's the one on the left). Both presses were set up on opened feed bags to help with the clean up. The red bucket between the two presses is filled with hot water to rinse the bottles off after they are filled. Both presses have a vinyl hose attached so that the bottles can be filled easier. They also have a stainless steel food service pan to put the bottles in and catch any spills. That not only helps with clean up, it helps save cider! We also put the presses up on old 4"x4" posts to raise them up just a bit. It makes it much easier to fill the bottles.

Prion on the left and Spunky on the right. Both here for Thanksgiving! The green tub in this photo is what we used to catch the apple pieces in after the clear tub handle broke. In this photo the green tub is full of hot water, some food safe disinfectant, and lots of apples. We soak the apples before they go through the grinder. The hot water saves our hands from getting too cold (no one wanted to use plastic gloves!) and I think it makes the apples release more juice. But that could be my imagination!

A screen added to the base caught any apple pieces that fell while we were filling the wooden pressing tubs. The tubs have a mesh bag in them, but sometimes when we are filling the bag apple pieces fall out. The screen keeps the apples from plugging the drain hole.

In this photo I've pulled the screen up and you can see the cider heading down the drain.

Yeay! Empty boxes from Saturday's pressing! Not all of them are in the photo, some are already gone. It was alot of work!

On Saturday we filled every 2-liter bottle I had saved (3 garbage bags full), every 1/2 gallon jar I had (12), every extra gallon and 1/2 gallon plastic pitcher I had (15 or 16), every empty 1/2 gallon jar my friend had (???) and a soup pot!

We kept a few, but my friend took everything else home and is going to process it this week. I have no idea how she is going to process so much cider! We usually freeze what we can and drink (or sell) the rest. I processed 14 quart jars on Saturday night because I had sent all my freezable containers with my friend. We've never processed it before, so it will be a good experiment to find out how it tastes.

A view of part of the garden where we dumped rotting apples and all the peelings after pressing.

Over the last two weeks we helped 6 families press cider, plus make our own. I estimate that we pressed over 100 bushels of apples this year. We also ruined two car jacks (over zealous help!) and bent a truck jack.

Our List of Equipment for Cider Making

• Good friends who don't mind working beside you

• Cider press (Whiz-bang style)
• tarps or old feed bags for under the press(es) (unless you are making cider outside, then an old pallet is better)
• hydraulic jack (that's what we'll be using next year) or a truck jack
• mesh laundry bags (for putting into the pressing tub)
• new window screen (for under the pressing tubs)

• apple grinder (we borrow a Happy Valley Ranch grinder from our friends)
• tarp under the grinder area for easier clean up (unless you are doing it outside, then an old pallet works better
• a tub for soaking the apples in before grinding
• a tub for catching the apple pieces after they are ground
• plastic garbage bag to act as a chute for ground apples
• lots of 2-liter soda bottles (or glass jars if you are going to process the cider)
• bucket of hot water to rinse off the filled bottles
• towels to dry off cold, wet hands and/or plastic gloves for working with the apples

• garden wagon lined with an old feedbag or extra tubs to haul the dry pulp (pumace) to the garden after pressing

• Frozen pizza or other fast food--you aren't going to want to cook when you are so tired and there is still an hours worth of clean-up to do

Update:

Why to avoid compact car jacks on the cider press

The 'totaled' jacks. The one on the left has stripped threads, the one on the right is bent. We ended up using some big truck jacks, but next year we will use hydraulic jacks. And maybe encourage helpers to be less zealous when they are working the press!

Making Cider!

We had about 30 bushels of apples that we picked from neighbors homes. They were glad they didn't have apples on the lawn to pick up, and Vet2Be was happy to press them into cider and sell it. All the money went into his mission fund, which he hopes to have fully funded by the time he is 17.

Here is the flyer we send around--ours had real names and our address on it, though! We ended up pressing cider until 7:00 pm, instead of ending at 4:00 pm because we had so many apples.

We were able to borrow a press from a very nice person in our town who lives about a mile away. It even has a motorized grinder on it. We were pretty excited about that. We were also able to borrow a grinder from Happy Valley Ranch. They have a wonderful grinder. We attached it to an old fish-tank stand that was really sturdy. Sorry I don't have a photo of it, we were so busy that day that I was glad to get the photos I did!

The cider press we borrowed.

What the inside of the fruit grinder looks like.

Some of the things that we did that were really helpful (we didn't realize at the time, but it really made the pressing easier).

1. Put the press on a pallet. When you are pressing cider there is always some spillage of either cider or crushed apples. The slats on the pallet let the 'stuff' fall through onto the ground.

2. Do it on the grass. The slush and extra water ends up in the grass, not on a cement floor which would get very slippery very quickly.

3. Set up a tent or pavilion above the press. We didn't do this until it started raining. We didn't expect rain on Apple Day, but we never know what the weather will do! A pavilion would keep the rain off or provide shade so that they apples wouldn't brown in the sun.

4. We have some stainless steel food service pans that hold about 4 gallons, they slid right under the cider press which made it very easy to collect the cider. Pouring from the corner into the 2-liter bottles was really easy, too.

Since we didn't have a real pressing bag, I went to Wal*Mart and bought their laundry sorter. Here is a link for a similar one from Target. It cost $15, the real pressing bags were $7 each and I would have had to drive about 45 minutes to get to the only store that has them. The mesh laundry bags held up very, very well and fit inside the pressing bucket perfectly. You can see the blue bag in the photo above, it is behind the press on the pallet.

Here are some of the kids that came to help press the cider. The one with his mouth open is Vet2Be's friend, KidChef. He made apple pies to sell that day. He is saving his money to go to Scout Jamboree spring 2010.

We pressed about 30 bushels of apples on Apple Day and got about 50 gallons of cider. We found a few more bushels of apples that we missed and will do them next weekend when Hubby is home. We sold most of the cider and ended up putting about 8 gallons in the freezer for our family.

We have been saving and collecting 2-liter soda bottles this year. I sanitized them before we put the cider in them. They are free (except for the time it takes to sanitize them) and I don't feel bad about throwing them away after we drink the cider.

Busy Week

Hubby has been gone since Monday and won't be back until Wednesday leaving Vet2Be and me to take care of things on the home front. We've been busy!

This morning we took a trip to the farm store to buy grain and feed for all the animals. Vet2Be also needed a new Sunday shirt and Sunday shoes before tomorrow since he has grown about 4" this year. Not only has he grown taller, he has grown stronger. Lifting 50 lb bags of grain is really easy for him now. He is really enjoying that!

This afternoon we filled the wood box with wood for the stove, as well as filling two plastic totes with kindling. Both are by the back door to make it easy to bring wood in to start a fire. We had some help from two young neighbor boys who love to be here with all the animals and they like the work, too. They did a great job! Not only did they fill the wood box themselves while I was filling the kindling boxes, they helped spread the pine needles in the poultry pen. Their mother said all her children think of our farm as Welcome (to our other) Home Farm, since they feel so at home here. I loved to visit my Aunt's farm when I was growing up and Hubby's grandparent's farm after we were married so I am glad other families feel the same way contentment when they visit here.

The last few years we have used pine needles in the poultry pen. They are stiff enough that they keep the pen dry or at least keep the chicken's and duck's feet out of the muck below. The year we used straw it was a mucky mess all winter and difficult to clean in the spring. Even though the pine needles are stiff, they don't seem to bother the duck's or chicken's feet, which was a concern the first year we used them. Our neighbors like to bring over their pine needles, too! It saves them the time of burning them or bringing them to the green-waste facility. In the spring the pine needles are ready to spread on the garden and till in. Our soil is alkaline here so the pine needles do a great job of adding some acid as well as loosening up the clay soil.

This week we also swept out the barn, cleaned buckets, and got some of our does bred to our buck. We're still milking every morning. And the new ducks have just started laying eggs!

We got a new driveway this week, too! Yipee! The old cement driveway was a gravel pit at the end and has needed to be replaced for about 4 years. It is nice to have an asphalt driveway that is smooooth!

We picked 3 1/2 trees worth of apples this week, too. Right now we have about 25 bushels of apples stored in the barn. We'll pick the rest of the fourth tree this coming week. Hopefully we will be able to make cider from either a rented or borrowed cider press. I wanted to have a press of our own this fall but with so much traveling back and forth to the East Coast this summer, a cider press is not in the budget.

We are hoping to have a small "Harvest Day" on our farm and sell whatever cider we don't have room to store. There are plenty of people who said they would love to see a cider press and how it works. We'll invite neighbors and friends over to watch us press the apples, sample the cider, and bring containers to fill. We've got other neighbors who are selling pumpkins this fall, and another neighbor who sells honey. We'll invite them to sell their goods that day, too. One of Vet2Be's friends wants to be a chef so he picked 2 bushels of apples and he will bring some apple treats to sell so he can also earn some money.

I made 2 batches of goat's milk and oatmeal soap on Monday. One was scented with Cranberry and the other was scented with Grapefruit. My neighbor heard what I had made and asked if I would teach the girls in our church's youth group how to make soap. So I taught another soap making class on Wednesday evening to some of the girls in our church's youth group. They loved it! The idea that goat's milk soap with oatmeal might help keep their skin clear was a big incentive to learn how to make it themselves. Apparently the local 'fancy' store sells goat's milk soap for $8 a bar. Each of the girls and their leaders went home with a small 1 1/2" by 2" bar of soap that smelled lovely. Their leader picked out a scent called Red Current that was light and refreshing. It filled the whole kitchen with a wonderful smell.

We had a great time on Friday evening! One of my other friends is knowledgeable about Navajo rugs, Navajo Churro sheep, and Navajo history. She came with her family and gave a wonderful presentation to 3 homeschool families. She and her husband did a fantastic job teaching us all sorts of interesting things about the Churro sheep and rug making. She has a beautiful collection of rugs and a Navajo loom that she showed us. Her son also demonstrated how to use a Navajo spindle. Hopefully I will get the pictures from one of the mothers that was there with a camera and post them sometime.

I haven't cleaned out the flower beds or the garden yet, but since I work part-time and we homeschool, it was a busy week getting everything done without Hubby's help. I'm glad that the leaves haven't fallen off the trees yet, too. I don't think I could have squeezed one more thing in this week!

I often look forward to the change in seasons because it means a different type of work. As we change from summer to winter, my work changes from gardening and outdoor farm work to more indoor work like knitting, sewing, and spinning. Today is one of the days that I am really looking forward to sitting in front of a warm fire and doing some hand work with the dogs sitting by my feet, Vet2Be reading in the chair next to me, and some pleasant music in the background.