Pressed into action

BRAMLEY trees are groaning with fruit while branches laden with damsons are drooping heavily to the ground. Crab apples, too, are plumping up nicely. In orchards and gardens all over the North-East and North Yorkshire, we are enjoying a bountiful autumn.

At Old Sleningford Farm, near Ripon, retired vet Robert, chemist Andrew, former schoolteacher Colin and smallholder Sean are among those queuing up with baskets bulging with home-grown apples, preparing to turn them into juice.

Last year’s wet autumn followed by the icy spring and long, hot, settled summer has provided particularly good conditions for apples, bringing out the natural sugars and beautifully- ripened fruit that last year refused to show.

Rachel Benson, who runs a series of “Apple Pressing Days” for people to produce their own juice on the farm’s three apple presses, in return for a small donation, is expecting record numbers this year.

It’s an activity first tried out on the farm more than ten years ago, using a small home-made apple press composed of a drill attached to a blade with a bucket. The following year a large press was created from a garden shredder.

As word spread, more and more people turned up at the farm asking if they could join in. Now Old Sleningford has invested in bigger and better equipment and sells juice and cider commercially to shops, while opening the presses to ever-increasing numbers of visitors.

This is the first pressing day of the season and the yard is filling with people. There are children washing apples, parents and teenagers piling their fruit into the “scratter” machine to watch them being mashed to a pulp before they are pressed and the juice extracted.

Everyone is helping each other, comparing apples and flavours, with the more experienced explaining to newcomers how the equipment works. Colin Mackay, 74, who has one eating and four cooking apple trees in his garden, all more than 100 years old, has been coming for three years and this is his best crop yet.

Before learning how to turn his apples into juice, he confesses, much of his fruit fell only to rot in the ground. Now he, wife Sylvia and their friends and family can enjoy their delicious juice, which they pasteurise to make it last right up to spring.

Today, he has brought 100 kilos of apples, from which he expects to get about 40 litres of juice: “It tastes much better than cheap juices made from concentrates that you get in the supermarkets,” he says. “It’s good fun to make too, there is always a great atmosphere here.”

RACHEL, who runs Old Sleningford Farm with her partner Martin Baker and friend Keith Mott, started juicing when they took over the smallholding in 2004.

Then, it had a 17-acre set-aside field and their aim was to start growing their own food, become more self-sufficient and help encourage others to do the same.

Rachel, who used to work in banking, started to become interested in where her food came from about 15 years ago: “I decided the only way to know you have had no chemicals in your food and that your meat has had a happy life is to grow your own. The three of us felt the same way.”

They now keep pigs, sheep, chicken and bees and have created a forest garden, growing everything from gooseberries to redcurrants, blackcurrants, raspberries and strawberries.

“We try and have fresh fruit all year round,” says Rachel.

They planted 120 apple trees and initially started making apple juice with the small home-made press which Keith created. “We made ten gallons of juice in our first year,” says Rachel.

Keith built a larger version, using a scrubbed and sterilised garden shredder to mush the apples up this time. As they made more and more juice, word soon spread.

“People heard about what we were doing and asked if they could bring their apples. It’s a way of encouraging people to make use of food that may normally go to waste. It just grew from there.”

More than 200 people, from places such as Leeds, York, Middlesbrough, Wetherby and Stokesley, now come to make juice and cider from their own apples every year.

“Children as young as three can do it and get involved. We have so many people who own huge orchards, but have never been able to use their apples.”

This year, more than 7,000 litres of juice will be produced on the farm’s three presses, which use heavy weights on racks to squeeze the juice from the pulp.

As well as using their own apples, Rachel makes juice for other large growers, including the Newby Hall and Lotherton Hall estates and the Walled Garden Centre project in Ripon.

Old Sleningford’s equipment can cope with large volumes. “Members of the public can bring as many apples as they like,” says Rachel. The presses can process up to 120kg at a time and roughly 2kg of fruit makes one litre of juice ANY variety of apple will do. “All apples will give you juice, even crab apples. The besttasting apple juice and cider is from a mixture of eaters and cookers because you get complexities of flavour, the sweetness, tartness and bitterness all combined,” says Rachel.

“The Discovery apple, ready about now, is really sweet and its red skin makes the juice slightly pink. Cookers are a lot tarter, so it’s good to mix the two. Some pears are very hard and don’t taste good, but we’ve found these often make a really good-tasting pear juice, so don’t discard them.”

Apples with mould are no good. “But bruising and scabby bits are fine. Apples you wouldn’t want to eat because of the look of the skin are perfect for juicing – don’t waste them,” says Rachel.

Old Sleningford also offers people the opportunity to have their juice pasteurised, or heat treated, to kill off natural yeasts and bacteria, so it will last up to two years. Unpasteurised juice will start to ferment after about a week, causing pressure to build inside the bottle, which will make it explode.

It’s a risk most people here today don’t want to take. Robert Ankcorn, 65, who, after an hour spent mulching and pressing his fruit, is pouring juice into glass bottles plans to pasteurise his at home.

He will have about 50 bottles by the time he is finished.

“And it’s practically free,” he says.

Chemist Andrew Jackson, 46, and his wife Maria, 47, are planning to make cider. As they pack their pulped eating and crab apples into straining cloths before stacking them in the presses, they calculate they will come away with about 30 litres of juice.

Teenage son Angus is helping them: “The atmosphere is great and everyone is so helpful,” he says. “We are hoping to come back with more apples next month.”

Father and son Sean and Scott Wheatley, who have recently moved back from the US to North Yorkshire in an attempt to live a simpler life are here to learn a new craft: “I want to show Scott there is another way of living,” says Sean, 44, who used to run a car dealership in Minneapolis.

As apple pressing grows in popularity, Rachel plans to put on as many days as are needed. The suggested donation of 20p for every litre pressed is invested in new equipment and trees at the farm, which also runs free and low-cost courses in everything from pig keeping and sausage making to forest gardening and smoking and curing food.

There are also opportunities for voluntary work, where people can come for a day or stay for a week: “We couldn’t do it all on our own,” says Rachel, who set up Old Sleningford Preserves three years ago to use up all the excess fruit and vegetables from the farm.

So far this year, she has produced 600 jars of jams and chutneys, which she and Martin sell and deliver to locals by tandem bicycle and trailer.

“We are dedicated to having a good time while living a low impact lifestyle. But we also hope to inspire others with some of the ideas we have,” she says.

NEXT JUICING DAYS:

Wednesday (only for taking away your juice, it cannot be left for pasteurising.

Juicing by reservation only – email to book.

Also, October 20, 26, 27 and 30.

• Old Sleningford Farm, North Stainley, Ripon, HG4 3JB. Call 01765-635202, email info@ oldsleningford.co.uk