Pressing Needs

Garden Grapes

When Autumn arrives we always get very busy. There's lots to harvest and lots of juice to press and process. First up this year was the grapes growing in our garden. I crushed them first, with a potato masher, then squeezed them, within an inch of there tiny lives, in our decade old apple press. Two Gallons are now bubbling away merrily in demi-jons. I was tempted to pasteurize the delicious juice but fermentation is a simple way to preserve fresh produce.

Grape Juice

Next up was the apples and we normally gather around two hundred Kilograms from parks, car parks and common ground around the city. However, this year the crop was massively depleted by relentles heat waves and consistent lack of rain. 

Apple Picking

Almost all the trees have been severely stressed and as a result the fruit yeild was way below par. Many of the trees had tiny apples and a lot of trees had no fruit at all.

Telescopic Game Changers

However, over time we have mapped out a vast amount of fruit trees, and this gives us many options. Even though the harvest was poor by comparison to any other year, and we've been doing this for fifteen years, we still managed to collect enough to make it worth our while.

Northam Apples

I didn't have time to weigh them but we definitely had over one hundred kilograms, and this was more than enough to cover our event at the British Science Festival. This event was attended by thirty plus people, and I led a short fruit and nut based walk over Southampton common, assisted by my family and the BSF volunteers. On our return, everyone mucked in with the chopping, milling, pressing and drinking of juice.

Apple Day in the Garden

Then a couple of days later, we did it all over again in the garden. We had our own harvest festival with friends, family and lots of fruit. Plenty of the juice got guzzled straight from the press, I pasteurised eight bottles as mitigation against the apocalypse, and two gallons were donated to a young cider maker who helped us with our picking endeavours.

The Juice is Loose
(British Science Festival)