hay ride this saturday-12-6

Hay Ride- Weather Looks Good

  

       I am heading out this morning to order a couple of dozen donuts, and unfortunately will have a hard time finding apple cider that isn’t pasteurized. This unfortunately is a requirement to sell apple cider publicly in the state of Ohio anymore. I remember one time gathering apples and we had a huge oak barrel and I cleaned the heck out of it. I bought a new wood spigot from a hardware, don’t imagine you could do that now except at Lehmans in Amish country, and with a pickup load of apples headed to Bolivar, Ohio and pressed my apples into cider. It was a really neat operation as you would unload the apples outside into an elevator which would take them up to a grinder that ground the apples skins and all and spit them out into layers of cheese cloth about 9 inches thick and about 3 feet square. these pads of ground apples would be put into a press after they were stacked about 2 high, and then the press would wind down, much like the press for making wine and as the pressure on the pads grew , you could see the cider start to form on the outside of the cheese cloth and then the cider would run into a collection vat under the press .

        This vat had a filter on it that would be changed constantly between loads of apples and had a spigot on it, that when opened would fill the oak barrel I had brought along with me. I still ended up buying about 100 empty gallon jugs and filled the barrel, yet still ended up filling about thirty of the empty jugs. I was offered a glass of my fresh pressed cider there on the spot and it was great. I sold the cider alongside the road till the local orchard man ran me off. He threatened all sorts of stuff because he couldn’t stand the competition. I was young and let him upset me and scare me away after threatening action he couldn’t back up in any court. My methods of making cider were the same as his and everyone in the area.

     Again this is the reason we cannot buy fresh cider, as the dairy producers and state orchard men conspired to have everything pasteurized to prevent us from contacting disease much the same as whole milk fresh from the cow has to be pasteurized. This prevents the farmer from selling his produce and funnels everything into a food manufacturers hands so he can control the price of milk and now cider. It has more to do with that than protecting people’s health. I spent almost 18 years drinking whole milk straight from the cow and it never hurt me as long as you took care of the milk and kept things clean. In some ways I think this leads man to become less resilient to allergies when we over sanitize our surroundings and never threaten our bodies to produce immunity from disease. The milk we buy from the store is vastly different than the milk from the cow. They strip the milk of its beneficial qualities and after manufacturing it offers no real advantage in antibiotic behavior, instead just offers the basics of nutrition.

Pasteurizing cider offers no real advantage to the final product, as what was in the cider is still there and if you think they only use the best apples in producing their cider, then you had better think again. Cider has always been a way to utilize less quality apples , and yet there is nothing wrong with that. The only difference is that the average guy has lost the ability to sell cider in the state of Ohio. Also what may have been organic apples is now rotting on the ground as cider producers use only apples from an orchard that sprays their crops with a multitude of chemicals that can clean rust off of chrome, let alone what it will do to your body.

    I guess I will need only a couple of gallons of cider after that spiel. Maybe I should just buy milk instead.

     I will try and have trips to the top of the hill every hour through the times of 12-6 pm, and will also have a chainsaw carving demonstration of abear I am going to carve in between hay rides. Also I plan on carving my pumpkins I grew here on the farm and will give those away to any young person who wants them. You must be less than 18 to enter a raffle to receive the pumpkins, I will also carve one pumpkin with a chainsaw and that is always interesting. This I will do around 4 in the afternoon. All we ask is to act reasonable and enjoy yourself and the eye candy that nature has presented to you in the form of fall colors. There is no charge.