A Juicy Tale!
The Plumpton Goes Green Team baptised our new apple pressing equipment at the Festive Fair on 26th November.
We bought the apple crushing and juicing equipment for the village with a grant from the South Downs National Parks Authority (SDNPA). Although it was late in the year, we decided to give it one trial run before the winter. The SDNPA sent along a film cameraman to record the occasion for their publicity.
Mark Hayward and Tom Hawthorne heroically crushed and juiced ten large bags of apples, and several villagers brought along their own fruit for them to juice. A big thank you to Jill Bristow, Stephen Israel and Heath Farm, who kindly donated apples for juicing, and to Ashurst Organics for taking away the apple mulch. Festive Fair stallholders and visitors lapped up the free samples and the Rangers doing the lunches and teas very kindly put up with us tramping into the kitchen to wash out sticky cups, filters and buckets.
The apple press is a Plumpton community resource. It crushes apples, pears and grapes. So many people in the village have fruit trees that produce more than they can eat. Next year we will be organising training workshops to teach people how to use the equipment so they can hire it to juice their own fruit. We will also hold several fruit pressing days when villagers can bring along their apples and pears to have them juiced.
If there’s enough fruit going spare, we may consider pasteurising, bottling and selling Plumpton Fruit Juice.
Plumpton Goes Green Team
Return to Home Page - Return to Plumpton Goes Green Team Page - Return to Events Page