Homesteading Middles: Juicing Apples

“It’s crazy! It takes out the pits! It takes out the seeds! It is delicious! It is so good!” Dragon sipped fresh juice as the machine whirred on its next batch.

“Tell me why you like making apple juice.”

“It’s fun watching.” Dragon put down his glass and stood on a stool assuming his observing stance - hands on knees, all the better to peer into the moving parts of the juicing machine.

“Because it is fun looking at this.” Bean pointed to the extruding pulp/skin/seeds from the rotating arm. She pushed the plunger down. “I like doing this.”

“I like the watching the stuff - the detritus coming out.”

English Major Momma point!

“Yea, that is a fun part.”

“I think it is cool that it turns brown very soon after.”

The machine whirred.

“Let us finish the bowl.”

When I was in the throes of some cleansing diet, I purchased my own juicer. Juicing one’s own fruit/veg is very satisfying and very labor intensive. One of the highlights of my time in the German clinic was the juicing area. All I needed to do was juice - someone else was in charge of the chopping, washing, and clean up.

Until this past summer when I made juice - I would drink juice. This is the first time I have ever juiced a bunch of apples, put them in a jar, and let it sit overnight.

And wow. What a difference a day makes.

Perhaps it is because our apples are not as pristine as what one finds in the store. As I wrote about, sigh, 13 years ago, our country has a horrible food waste issue. There is no way our lumpy oddly speckled apples would make it onto a supermarket shelf. They wouldn’t even make it to the thirds bucket in a farmer market. But they are food.

We planted these trees when Bean was weeks old. For the first year we watered them diligently. We prune them annually, weed them sporadically, and this summer finally figured out kaolin clay for pest control. 9 years after planting this is the first year we have been gifted a significant harvest.

We are not about to reject the sweet tangy fruit that we have been gifted. So we savor the juice and marvel at the strata in the juice after sitting overnight in the fridge.

I ponder the three layers. The apple foam at the top. The relatively translucent middle expanse of cider colored liquid. And then there are three more layers at the bottom of the jar.

All of this texture and intrigue gets filtered and pasteurized in the juice we purchase in the store. Much less fun.

And WAY less flavorful.