On to another adventure.

Since we live in Sonoma County, every summer & fall, it’s harvest season for apples. Gravensteins are the locally known varietal with significant influance from the famed botanist Luther Burbank.

That paired with my love for hard cider, we will be pressing apples this year. Last year I made a press with some plastic buckets and while it worked, it was messy.

This year, we have a propper fruit press and are planning the harvest and processing appropriately with dedicated gear and space.

One of our trees is an early variety of Whitney crab apple – deliciously crisp with the tight balance of tartness and sugars which we harvested today We go 40lbs from a five foot tree – leaving a few apples for the birds.

We have also sources through friends 300lbs or so of apples of different varieties to harvest later in the season.

The apples are now in storage to build some additional sugars and then to pressing.