Apple Pressing

Here you can see the heroic efforts of Jason, one of our American WWOOFers, who is squeezing every last darn drop out of the apples that my friend Sheena brought round. The minute she said it was for making cider, he squeezed even harder.

To that end, we took him to the Cider Festival at L'Hermitiere today. It was good fun, not only seeing how they make the cider on a much grander scale than us but also because there were lots of local producers there at a farmers' market type thing. I bought some cold pressed rapeseed oil as they had the hand-cranked machine there converting the seeds right in front of our eyes - very sustainable. Jason of course bought some cider but only after he'd had a few tastings!

There were two lovely Percheron cart horses there with little carts that tripped round the fields mainly for the childrens' benefit. We waited for 20 mins in the queue that had formed in an orderly fashion and got to front. The horses and carts approached, slowed down, we got ready with our excited children and, horror of horrors, all these french families barged past and scrambled onto the carts before we could even catch our breath!! Jason was gobsmacked, I was annoyed but Ben was nonchalant as he said that they always do that - form a queue and then ignore it. He's the one that normally queues with the boys so he should know. He said that you had fight to keep your place so the next time we got our elbows out and barged with the best of them! We enjoyed the ride!