Cider Press 2.0

After the last cider making blowout disaster, I decided that a new, updated style of press would be in order. I wanted one less likely to explode, and one that would require less muscle-power from me. I am no longer in my 30's, you realize. So my solution was this; it's maiden voyage done last night with our good friends, the Lees.

I thought that maybe I should try this great experiment without any company, but what's the fun in that? If you're going to fail, you might as well fail while your friends are around so that someone can make fun of you for it, right?  

Updates on previous blog postings.

I have a tendency to post about a project in the middle of it, then as it gets closer to finishing it; I often become less excited about it, since I'm usually already thinking about my next project that I am really excited about, so I thought I would post a few updated pictures of the projects I have been working on:

The new barn is coming along nicely if a little slowly; I've begun framing on the inside.

One of the really rewarding parts of my life now is that my boys are becoming old enough to actually help.  It is really awesome, and they are pretty into it; I don't have to flog them to come and help their old man.  They can really be a big help, and I don't really know why, but it brings joy to me to show them how to do stuff.  I really enjoy enabling their little imaginations to create actual stuff.  Maybe I mentioned this already but I remember so desperately wanting to build stuff, to make stuff when I was a kid.  I told my oldest boy several months ago that I wouldn't teach him to weld until he was 10, though, just to be on the safe side.  (one month away, now)

Various stages of the new cider press.

In primer

2nd coat

 And a new project!  Meet Blossom, our latest addition to our Farmlet.  We bought/traded a Hog for her from our good friends the Falls.  She is Holstein, though she lacks some of the classic coloration, and she is a bred heifer, about 2 months gone.  She is a very friendly girl, sometimes almost too friendly as she is inclined to think that any time you aren't feeding her, you should be scratching her, and so she prompts this by rubbing her head on what ever part of you is closest.

I think I will take this moment thinking about teaching my boys how to do stuff to chronicle how I learned to weld. I have recounted this story to my own father, who took it in good humor; I don't think he will take it as disrespect to retell it.  This welding project above has made it freshened in my memory.

I was probably my older son's age, 9 or 10 (just guessing) when it occurred to me that I MUST learn to weld.  In my household growing up, while my Dad had plenty of woodworking tools, we by far used more welding, torching, metal cutting tools etc.  So after begging my father, who is a quite accomplished welder, mercilessly, (probably the only thing that I was ever allowed to beg for) he finally consented to teach on Sunday next, after church.

I was beside myself with excitement; I was going to learn to weld! (oh, Joy!) We only had one helmet, but I had a darkened welding lens that came out of an old helmet that I could just hold over my eyes so that I could watch the instruction, so I was ready!  Sunday finally came, we got home and ate Sunday dinner, then dad settled down for a nap (oh, agony!) and finally, he woke up and I reminded him. "That's right" he said.

We walked outside to the old Lincoln cracker box welder, parked beside an elm stump that we used back then as our workbench, in silence.  Dad turned the welder on, hooked up the ground, and stuck a new electrode in the stinger.  He put the helmet on, in lifted up position, turned and looked at me and said "One time", which is classic Mr. Foster for, pay close attention, you only get this once.  He then flipped down the helmet, busted out a three inch bead on a piece of metal and said, "Practice that" and left. I spent the rest of the afternoon making short bursts of ZZT! noises and then wiggling and yanking my electrode loose. Those of you who have ever learned to stick weld, regardless of the instruction given, I think you will sympathize with the level of frustration in this sort of anti climatic situation.  ZZT! Yank, ZZT! Yank, ZZT!, Yank... But I eventually figured it out, now that he had basically given me permission to try.

The funny thing is, I reminded my Dad once about this experience a couple of years ago.  He laughed and even though he didn't recollect it at all, he took it as the good natured ribbing that it was meant as.  His response was that his lesson to me was a whole lot better than my Grandpap's to him.  Dad said when he asked Grandpap to teach him to weld, Grandpap's response was, in his unique, quintessential raspy and agonizingly slow drawl: "Weeeeeell, .......you can't really teach.... welding........... there's just them that can............. and them that..... can't." End of lesson. (you would have had to know my Grandpap) 

Another Apple Day

This year we actually had 2 smaller Apple Days; one a couple of months ago in August so that that Uncle Jonathon could experience making cider before he and Aunt Michaela left to go back to China. It worked out great because the neighbor's trees were ripe with apples and I had been driving by coveting them for weeks, seeing them just laying and rotting on the ground.  Then he offered once to let me have as many as I wanted; he didn't want them, so we made a short Apple Day out of it.

Not a great picture of Michaela, but Maddie is so cute!

Cutting out bad spots and worms.

Making the "Pomice"

Oiling the press with Food Grade Oil

Happy hogs!

Then in late September we had a more official Apple Day, but it was also a Half Apple Day, because we did it on a Sunday rather than a Saturday so that Aunt Arianna could be involved.  But we did more than just make cider.

Apple Turnovers, made by Mini Herself.

Prepping the basket

Nothing better than Fresh Pressed Cider!

Disaster!!

Then, disaster struck; the basket blew out from all the pressure of the press!  I patched it, but I have this thing against having to continually fix things so I have become disenchanted with this system.  I have begun working on a new system that will hopefully improve things and be more reliable.  Here are some early pictures.

It will look way different than the old one, but I hope it is a lot more effective.  It is air-over-hydraulic powered, instead of Dan powered, so it should be.  What I need is a way to keep the posts from rusting that doesn't use paint, because the platform will surely scrape it off as it goes up and down, therefore leaving paint chips in the cider.  Any ideas?

Yellowstone Adventure, Part 7 (final)

We got up in the Hotel and only had 3 things to do on that Saturday: 1:Rushmore, 2:Crazy Horse, 3:Drive Home, no big deal right?  Right.

Rushmore was great, it was really interesting and impressive  but it was quite dimmed by the Crazy Horse project.  Crazy Horse is so interesting and amazing; we had no idea they had been working on it for so long, and if you don't know anything about it, its worth going to see even if you arent really on your way to anything close.  It is easily 10 times the size of Rushmore faces, probably more.  The really impressive thing about it is the guy and later his family that has headed the whole project since 1948 or so.  They are so dedicated to it that it has absorbed their whole lives! The dad died in 1982 without ever seeing even the face finished!  I can't recommend enough at least finding some articles and reading about it.  The carving itself is not so mind-blowingly awesome just yet; they still have 90% of it to carve, but they seem like they are gathering momentum now.  Anyway, some pics:

Trying to capture the expressions and positions...

Really?  Really, kids?  You think you are the first one to think about picking the really big nose?

weird boys...

Me and my Smokin' Hot Mama squinting, it was very bright.

In the white plaster is the "mock-up" the real deal is way in the background. 

Well, that is our Yellowstone adventure wrapped up; we made it home Saturday night just after midnight.  I drove about 60 hours, and just under 3000 miles and I never got pulled over except as I was pulling into my driveway at my office at around midnight.  He claimed I made a lane change without signaling.  I was so tired and sick of not being home, I was really frustrated with him, but managed to keep my mouth shut.  I think he felt my frustration and sent me along my way without a ticket.  I did think it was a little ironic, though...  I did fine, until I made it to Hutchinson...

It really did inspire me to travel more, though.  I told Herself that we will go for 2 weeks, but in 2 years to some more National Parks.  I think a motor home or an RV is the way to travel though.  Definitely not in a Honda Pilot!

Yellowstone Adventure, Part 6

From this point, I probably shouldn't call it a Yellowstone Adventure, as we left early before light to go to home via South Dakota.  Seeing Yellowstone as the sun came up was another whole experience in and of itself.  Seeing all the waters misting and steaming in the very early light while it was very cool (in the 30's) was pretty amazing.  As usual, the pictures are sooo disappointing compared to the real deal...

We left the park out the north east side, through Cooke City, then took Bear Tooth Pass in Montana.  At the risk of being repetitive, it was truly amazing.  It was so high, so stark and barren it really made me impressed with God's work, but also his gift of wanting to overcome obstacles.  If someone hauled my sorry backside up those mountains on a mule a 100 years ago and told me we would build a road over it, I'd have thought he was plumb loco!  Couldn't be done!  But they did it; there wasn't much traffic on it though.  

I thought it was cool that all along the side of the road there were these 20' sticks sticking out of the ground; we presumed that they were for helping the road crews find the road.  I was talking to a friend of mine that lives near Hutch that is originally from that area that said he was there on that road the first day it opened up this spring, about the middle of May.  He confirmed our suspicions with this photo below, if you look closely, you can see the sticks poking through the top of the snow.  The jeep offers some good reference.  Remember this is in late May, and the road is perfectly clear, so presumably the snow has melted some already...

Once we got through and over the pass, it was a lot of driving (ugh) through Montana and Wyoming.  Really pretty country, but I was sick of driving by this point.  We did stop at the Battle of Little Big Horn site, and it was pretty cool, but we were of course in a big fat hurry.

They had a really cool museum with lots of information in it with models built of the battle scenes.  The boys were super into it.  I had a hard time appreciating any of it, as I was brought up to hate General Custer (this was before it was cool to hate General Custer for killing Indians) because of a death he apparently inflicted upon some ancient ancestor of mine due to some grave act of cowardliness on Custer's part.  My mom doesn't hate anybody; but she hates General Custer!

We then traveled to Devil's Tower.  By now my patience is wearing thin, and I just want to see the inside of my hotel room and relax with a cold beverage while the kids splash in the pool.  When I pulled up to the little kiosk, the ranger came out and told me it would take 10 bucks to get in, I asked him what I could do inside the gate that I couldn't do outside.  He no more than got the last syllable finished of telling me "you can drive right up to the base of it" when he heard my tires screeching out a U-turn.  I slowed down enough to take this "through the windshield" shot.

   

Ugh, so not worth it...  Not after a week in Yellowstone!  Anyway, we made it to Rapid City, South Dakota and grabbed a quick bite, then headed to the hotel.  I drove about 12-13 hours that day with 4 kids.  I was beat!

Yellowstone Adventure, Part 5

Thursday being our last day, we decided that we wanted to go see Old Faithful again and then we still had not seen the Grand Prismatic Spring, so we did both.  I didn't get any good pictures of the Grand Prismatic Spring, it was too steamy and too big to get a good shot of it, you really need to see it from above. Let me just say that it is quite impressive and, of course, bizarre.  Here is a link to see better pictures of it and read about what makes the colors, if you are interested.

When we went back see Old Faithful, we decided to do something a little different; we hiked up several hundred feet up the side of a nearby mountain and got up to the look out and watched the eruption from up there.  It was really fun and hardly anyone else around.

This big boy just ambled across the road in front of our car.

One of the most rewarding parts of spending so much concentrated time in a car with your kids is that you begin to realize where each of your kids get their irritating habits.  In my kids' case, it turns out that they get all their irritating habits from me. Like my youngest's habit of just tormenting everyone else in the car if he gets bored at all or isn't getting enough attention from every one else in the car; that's me.  Like my eldest's really irritating habit of just deciding that she is going to be the exception to our rules; that is also me. It is really startling to have it pointed out to you;  I had dubbed her "Princess Exception" when after "excepting" myself from a few rules that were an annoyance to me, i.e. speed limits, parking rules, entry/exit signs, no leaving the trail rules, seatbelt laws, no stopping in the road rules, etc earned me the title of "Captain Exception".  She just doesn't understand that all that stuff is different.  Its awesome when I do it; its annoying when other people do it.  I don't understand why she cant see the difference? 

The youngest and I also earned the nicknames Old Faithful and Young Faithful, due to our regularity of needing to stop for bathroom breaks; about the same frequency as the original namesake.  I'm pretty sure we never drove past a rest stop without stopping... Hey, I drink a lot of liquids.  

We were pretty sad to be leaving, but my mind was getting a little overwhelmed at being amazed at so much stuff.  I started craving normalcy and even found myself getting a little irritated when I saw something else remarkable. 

Just as a side note; one thing I started noticing early on and decided to pay attention to it and it held true throughout the trip:  Where are the people of color?  I saw thousands of people from other countries, especially Asians, but virtually no black people or Hispanic people.  It looked like a KKK convention up there.  Don't people of color enjoy the outdoors?