We’ve been out and about with the community apple press to venues in Portreath, Redruth and Camborne, harvesting local apples and inviting local people to come and help. It’s be a fantastic month for apples and apple juice making and we’re really thrilled to see everyone else as excited as us about the community tradition of apple pressing. First we joined Camborne All Saints Community Centre Food group where participants pressed the apple juice to go alongside their home made vegan pizza – the whole lunch was really tasty! Then to Portreath to have a community apple pressing session whilst other members of the community went out for a monthly litter pick. After that we had two very busy and productive apple pressing days at Food Troops Community Kitchen and Garden in Victoria Park, Redruth. We got through A LOT of apples, many hands meant it was a fun AND productive tour of the community apple press. We hope to take it to many more venues next year – would you like us to visit your community group or venue?
Don’t forget you can also borrow the community apple press see details here.
We’ve been working in partnership with organisations who have a long tradition of pressing their orchard apples – Cormac rangers manage the site at Tehidy Country Park, including the traditional orchard there. Cormac’s Senior Countryside Officer, Gavin Henderson and site Ranger, Stuart Croft have been running annual apple pressing sessions there for a number of years with the team of regular volunteers who help out across the site every fortnight. Following a period where they’ve been unable to press due to Covid, this year everyone was happy to get back to this much loved annual event. We took along the larger community apple press to try out to compare with the smaller one that is normally used by the team there: there were mixed views but overall the free standing press was easier to use – whether the quantity of juice increased has yet to be agreed upon!
Kehellend Horticultural Trust has operated their apple pressing production for many years making use of their vast range of apple varieties in older and younger orchards, plus esaplier orchards. They also offer an annual community apple pressing service for local people to bring apples in return for bottles of juice. Contact them for more information and their terms here.
