The orchard year
The apple side of the farm — what happens between March and November, when the syrup pans are clean and the cider press is starting to look interesting again.
From the orchard · 4 min read
The cider press lives in a shed at the bottom of the property. From November to March it sits under a tarp, untouched. Everyone else gets to forget about it. The apples don't.
Here's roughly what the apple year looks like, if you've ever wondered why a cider is only good in the fall.
March — pruning
The first apple work of the year overlaps with the tail end of sugaring. You prune the trees while they're still bare — easier to see the shape, easier to make decisions. Cut out anything dead, anything growing inward, anything crossing another branch. Open the canopy so sun and wind can move through. A well-pruned apple tree looks slightly less impressive than an unpruned one and gives you twice the fruit.
It's a quiet kind of work. You can do it in the cold without breaking a sweat, and the tree doesn't care that you're tired from the sugar bush.
May — blossom and bees
Late April or early May, depending on the spring. The blossoms come on suddenly — a quiet week and then a loud one, where the trees go white-pink overnight and the bees show up. We don't keep bees of our own; we rely on the wild ones and the colonies a neighbour two concessions over keeps for honey.
If a frost comes during blossom week, you lose the year's apples. There's nothing you can do but watch the forecast and hope. Most years it's fine. The years it isn't, you remember.
“If a frost comes during blossom week, you lose the year's apples.”
June, July, August — quiet
Nothing much to do, which is a kind of luxury. You mow under the trees. You check for fire blight. You hand-thin the worst overloaded branches so the fruit on the rest grows fuller. You let the season do its job.
The fruit changes from green-hard-pebble to green-baseball to green-with-a-blush as the weeks pass. By mid-August the early varieties are turning. The press gets pulled out, cleaned, and tested with a few bushels.
October and November — pressing
The big work. We press in batches — a heritage mix of apples that varies year to year but always tilts tart over sweet. Sweet alone makes a one-note cider; tart on top of sweet makes it sing. The apples go through a grinder, then onto a slatted basket, then under a screw press. The first run is the cleanest.
We press, taste, blend, jug, and chill in the same afternoon. The whole jug goes from tree to fridge in under six hours. That's why our cider is only sold from late October to mid-December — and only refrigerated. There's no shelf-stable version; the moment you pasteurize fresh cider, you've made something else.
When the last apples come off the trees and the last jug goes into the cooler, the year is over. We tarp the press, pile the leftover pomace into the compost, and look up at the sugarhouse on the hill, which is starting to fill with split firewood again.
