Broken Cider Press

Well, the rest of the weekend was brutal. I finished making the cider press only to have it break on me. The design was sound, but I need to refine it somewhat.

Basically, the press is built of two 18"x18" boards of 1" plywood, with 2x4s framing one piece and reinforcing each piece, one underneath, one atop. The reinforcing braces must be placed perpendicular to the grain of the plywood. Once you've assembled them all together, you drill a 3/8" diameter hole in each corner such that it penetrates squarely the reinforcing braces. Now, place the press into a 20"x20" plastic basin and fill the base of the press with a 1" layer of apples that have been run through a food processor. Put a towel over that layer, and add another layer. Keep adding until you've filled the frame.

Now, with a wrench and four hex bolts, slowly screw down the top until juice runs out into the basin. Keep going for quite a while, letting as much liquid drain out as possible. Then disassemble the press, discard the compost and refill. It's possible to get a lot of liquid out of the apples his way. Unfortunately, my press broke on the second go. I had not drilled the holes for perfect alignment, and I used carriage bolts instead of hex bolts, and they tore loose from their fittings and spun in place. Undoing them wrecked the threads. I'll try again next year.

Omaha and I ended up hand-milling and squeezing the juice out by hand, a real pain in the neck. But we got a gallon and half of must out of about four gallons of apples, so we're fermenting that to see what we get.

Gardening Life

Gods, our soil is crap.

We had hit a few Labor Day sales to fill out the girls' back-to-school wardrobes. Thank the Goddess they're not brand-conscious yet and could care less about who makes their denim. The lines were utterly insane, as too many stores use their sales this day to clear out their summer inventory and prepare of Halloween and the Christmas season. Waiting for the fitting room so Yamaraashi-chan could try on a few pairs of jeans was nuts.

On the way home we stopped by the garden store and picked up a whole bunch of perennials in the hopes that they would survive the winter, especially since they were unbelievably cheap ($5 for a half-pallet of mixed herbs) and we've had good luck with buys like that.

Omaha bought a companion tree to shield the rhododendron. While I had worked the apples, she cleaned and leveled the area in front of our house, then mixed 20 gallons of compost with our soil and spread it. Then she called for my help to plant the tree, which required a deep hole in the front yard in front of the rhody. Our soil is just compacted sand and awful, and my arms ached by the time I had a one-foot-deep hole.

The girls were great, though, tending to all the plants, watering them carefully. Kouryou-chan was more gentle than she needed to be, holding the hose in such a way that the plants "would feel like it was raining." Yamaraashi-chan just took my advice and let the hose pour into the pallet, and we were done in short order.

Now, I have to mix more compost and sand to make a base for the herbs in the back yard, and then nurse them through the winter. Fortunately, parsley, sage, and even basil are very hardy plants after all. And rosemary's damn near unkillable.