Sunday of Labor Day weekend provided perfect weather for apple milling and pressing, cool and cloudy, which kept the interest of the bees and wasps at a minimum, as they like sweet, fresh apple juice as much or more than people do. It was the third fruit milling and pressing occasion of the season at Steve and Sally Yancey's in Russell Hill; twice before in August they'd assembled friends with 5-gallon buckets and baskets of fresh picked apples, in the first instance, and pears for their second juice "squeezing".
An antique but efficient cider mill has been set up and in use in the Yancey's backyard for more than twenty years. Steve picked up the old mill at an equipment sale in the 1980s at the Dr. Kirby house for all of $12, and although he had to re-build most all of the wooden parts, the iron mill and screw press needed only steel wool and oil to remove the rust, and grease to bring the mechanical parts back to service.
There was enough left of the mill's old iron hooped wooden buckets to make a pattern for new ones, and the mill performs as it was designed to work in the late 19th Century: washed apples are dumped whole into the hand-cranked grinder, which turns them into pulp which falls into the slatted pressing bucket beneath--when the hooped, open-ended bucket is full, it is slid over beneath the screw, where a round wooden plug is placed on top of the pulp. 2X wooden blocks are added on top of the round plate and then a powerful screw is cranked down, exerting heavy pressure, squeezing the fresh apple juice from the ground-up pulp. The juice runs out a spout in the end of of a large wooden pan into bowls, and the dark amber juice is then poured through a strainer into gallon jugs or other containers.
This past Sunday's exercise was a six-person operation, and we all took turns at the washing, grinding, pressing and filtering parts of the juice making process. We started late morning with more than 20 buckets of apples, and after little more than two hours of delightful work had produced more than 20 gallons of fresh, sweet apple juice.
2006 was a good year for fruit in Macon County, at least for those of us with trees lucky to avoid the late frosts. Th early blooms of many fruit trees in low lying areas were apparently nipped in the bud by frost, but trees on hillsides or up on the ridge seemed to have been spared, and there were plenty of apples this year. We juiced a number of old-time varieties, and mixed them as they were processed to blend a juice which varied from "light" to "cidery". It was all good and fresh and sweet.
It's hard not to drink too much of the fresh juice, as we wanted to sample each and every batch. The fresh stuff "will clean you out" if you are not careful, and an apple juice bellyache (or headache) is to be avoided if at all possible.
Reaping the sweet, juicy reward of their early fall apple picking and milling efforts on Sunday were Steve and Sally Yancey, Jerry and Ellie Greenway, Phil Schultz and Jeff Poppen.
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