Fruitful Forage:

Being low on sharps I set off today with a plan...
mind you I did forgot to stock up on the various bags etc. another doh...
In lean years the secret is to do your reccy's early and I knew there was fruit waiting.
Long story short, I returned some 2hrs later with 60kg of sharp and sweet
Last call was a tree I'd found some years back but rarely used (wild sharps seem a little rarer that sweets for some reason...) anyway it's here I regretted not stocking up on bags or trays as half of the bags had holes from previous forays. So I cut back the brambles, ferns and nettles... (yeah the fern is an interesting one... that's former railways for you - I think they must get carried along like Rosebay Willow Herb?) ...ready for more foraging in due course, one call was to Wilko's for another tin of water-based polyurethane varnish and another was to claim a refund from Tesco where I was charged £30.40 for a 70 pence loaf of bread yesterday! Anyroadup, that's all for now, though I did take some pics - including the Dunnington Picker in action!

Meanwhile I think this is the video I had in mind:

Here we go!

eh, now the video post icon has disappeared..? Just not my day...
ah... that's 'cos I was in HTML mode. Right...
this just might work... for what it's worth, but this is after setting up the scratter last week:

and pulping (sadly as yet a second process for me to get the right porridge like consistency):

... apologies for the low presentational skills...

aw bollocks, that's the wrong video... ha ha. Never mind, we see progress!
I haven't really got the hang of holding the phone without prematurely halting recording... tch.

anyroadup, Friday's sweet addition to the stash turned out to be a cracking 52 kg. Now if I could turn up 52kg every day...
I need to get my hands on some sharps next! Though I have done a little homework this year, but it has to be noted a couple of my regulars are totally without fruit. This year I've needed to dig a little deeper as it were and there's no doubt there's ample fruit out there if you invest a bit more time, though you can never be sure that someone else will have beat you to it in the scrumping game!
Last Saturday, around dusk, I was harvesting a local crab with my Dunnington picker*, when I realised the owners were stood not 10 ft away checking me out! As it happens I'd sought permission some 4-5 yrs back and this stood me in good stead. A local surgeon (I think) owns the tree that overgrows the roadside and he was fine about me taking the apples once we'd established contact and I'd reintroduced myself... he also gave me permission to enter his garden to collect fruit that falls onto his property. His tree is a good regular cropper (for a bitter sweet) though tend to be 'grubby' - cidermakers can live with grubs though.
I've also tracked down 2 other good crops of bitter sweet this year - I can't see the bitters being a problem this year if I can get to 'em 1st that is...

* I'm overdue for a post on this remarkable little device!

bedtime for me now though... at least the Herpes Varicella Voster virus seems to be on the losing end now... yeah, I reckon I've turned a corner...

Fingers Crossed...

All very well but vitually made cider tastes of air... here goes though.
In the real world I've varnished another press board (more on this if time permits) and weighed some of the incoming fruit from Friday (all sweets)

Picture the scene:

looks promising already... all I've done after trawling for advice is to run the raw vid through MS Movie Maker and saved it at a lower resolution - tch, all this trouble and the vids so far are crap anyway...

Yo,
amazing...
so Bow Bridge via You Tube, here's same vid direct  to Blogger - hey, don't try running b4 you can walk lol

is it me or is the 1st a bit clearer..?

trying again

...tame experts have 'wised up'. There are techies and slow learners...

via You Tube - embedding shouldn't be a problem - I was hoping to save time
Laugh out loud indeed.
so then You Tube tell me it's shaky and are fixing that for me...

'We've fixed the shakiness in your video' Do I want to keep it? YOU BET:

...just look at those medieval stone arches... such an idyllic scene...
I'm on it.

you'd think it would come up with: 'Hey, your video is shit - it doesn't work for a start.'
- perhaps, 'It's a bit shaky but this is the  least of your worries...'
or maybe just plain old: 'Wrong format'
thing is, it's not, it's MPEG4.
Maybe I need to dance around a few standing stones for a bit...

If at first you don't succeed

post a nice relaxing short film of Bow Bridge near Furness Abbey...

listen to the nice running water and the merry 'tweet tweet'
(patience is not a virtue it's a bloody necessity!)

What's going on..?

Turned out the press cloths were in a pillow case in the airing cupboard... confusingly 3 were in the garage in a bag. This was down to a last small 5 litre pressing of that single variety (which turned out very nice...) But it's better to have a well organised tidy up at the year end, so everything is to hand when you need it... however that, generally speaking, has not been the story of my life so far...
I managed to hump the new steel press into the garage on Sunday, which was a tight fit through the doorway as when I measured the height I forgot to account for the 1" of the bottom of the steel door frame... doh.
Looking like I've been hit by a bus at present as I've had an outbreak of shingles. A first for me, and it makes you feel a bit out of sorts, however a late pressing last night produced Batch 1 which has made 1.050 - (1st batch last year made 1.051), so all's coming together.
I've had to make a temporay top sliding beam to support the jack for now and the 1st press proved a little disappointing yield-wise. For 45kg (99lbs) of pulp I could do with a few more press cloths and it took all this to fill the 30 litre fermenter and the pulp didn't come out like compressed cardboard and was quite moist. With the old wooden press I could tilt it to encourage juice run-off, but the steel thing's going nowhere!
I got some videos which I managed to get from phone to laptop via 'Zune'...(?) but for the life of me can't work out how to get them from there to the blog... all good fun...

Progress to report

Been without tinterweb thingy for a few weeks (or eeks)...
So things are going off here, new press almost complete, so a pic is due... all I need is some space in the garage - in there today - and have enough apples for a pressing. Can't find bloomin' press cloths anywhere though... durgh...