Apples

APPLE PRESSING.
There will be some photos to include in this note, but this weekend, September, 21, about a month earlier than normal I opened the garden/orchard to all the islanders to come and pick apples and to to press them for juice.  People began to  pick on Friday , early Saturday morning people started arriving until late in the day.  It really was looking quite splendid with piles of apples in lareg contaiers efverywhere. One of my friends brought his aluminum boat over and after cleaning it out thoroughly we filled it up with water and some bleach, dumping lots of windfall apples into that container.  It was delightful tosee the young families coming over with their small children, families lying on the grass under trees, and new comers meeting old timers.

Sunday starts about 10 and the set up of the huge chopper and the presser always presents difficultleis.  At first the outside electrical outlets which apparently are very sensitive blow out and there is lots of tooing and froing into the fuse box.. but finally it was set up, meanwhile people were chopping.. with the new chopper it is not necessary to chop them too fine, and so it began.  A certain routine, halved apples thrown into the chopper, the resulting mash dumped into the press.  We rent a presser which works amazingly well, the dumped mash fits around a rubber bladder, which is filled up with water and thus presses onto the mash and the resulting juice runs out in great profusion.  The dry material left is composted or thrown out for the deer. 

Sometime in the middle of the day the BBQ is lit and hamburgers sausages, etc are cooked up.. pople have shown up with yummy things.  If we had had it a month later it usualy is quite cold and every one is glad of the  hot food, but today with was hot, and the cold drinks were welcome.

This is the final thing for me to do before really settling down to tidy the house and to organzie all the tickets and pack. We leave on wednesday morning early.. about 0900.  It is not like going on a plane, where you are whisked off across the world marking off the hours backwards or forwards, here there shall be a slow shifting of sun and time.   I wonder if they will make us do something odd when we cross the equator or the international date line.