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10/29/2008: "Harvest 2008"

The photo above shows one of the most reliable apple trees on the property; I stripped it bare of apples on a twilight evening in mid-September, and carted the apples home. I probably got a hundred pounds of apples off this one tree! All in all, I harvested a pickup load of apples, which I stashed in the garage for a couple of weeks to soften them up; then, as luck would have it, Joe G. from church invited us to his cider pressing party in early October, and I took them all over there to press.

It was a nice, social event, and Joe has some awesome press equipment. In addition to the standard wooden presses he has a cast iron monster that can squeeze out a whole five gallon bucket in one go! In the photo below you can see it in operation with his daughter turning the screw.



The pressing exceeded my expectations: we pressed 10 gallons of cider from the apples I brought, plus gave some apples for community cider, too. So this year I have two five gallon carboys bubbling away in the basement. I might make it through the year on those two carboys, and not have to buy much beer (except Momma likes her beer during baseball season, so beer purchases are not going to zero).

It was also a very good year for plums. I harvested probably 70 pounds of these babies, and ran them through the dryer at home.



And of course, there were the ever-present blackberries. I didn't pick any for jam this year, as we're still working our way through last year's batch, but they were delicious eaten in between other activities down at the farm.



Nate had a fairly successful harvest of potatoes, squash, and corn. He sold the first two items at the Corvallis Farmer's Market, where he said that he managed to build up a bit of a following. Some of his projects didn't turn out as well as he hoped; I think that he had some garbanzo beans that didn't yield much, and one melon project that was a bit below expectations. But overall he got a lot of good experience with the mechanics of bringing a crop to market.