Transition Town Dorchester had a lovely sunny day for Apple Day, held this year on October 1st at the Railway Orchard. Our wassailing earlier this year had clearly worked, since we had an abundant crop of apples from both orchards. We had a group of willing children to pick the remaining apples on the trees, and the rest of us came armed with chopping boards and knives to cut up the apples ready to be macerated. The shreds were then put into the apple press and beautiful golden juice, sweet and tangy, came out of the holes in the container – it was a sort of special autumn magic happening right before our eyes!
We now have two apple presses, and there was a big crowd of us working flat out for several hours. But whereas in the past we could easily deal with all the apples on all our trees in one day, we have realised that trees have a way of growing and we now have far more apples than we ever had before! So we may be doing another pressing later in the month.
