A wild harvest gone bad.

And by "wild harvest" I'm literally talking about food that grows on trees, often neglected and generally thought of as a nuisance to home owners. Apples, pears and other fruit tress will grow on long after the original owners who planted then have moved on to other dwellings.  Often leaving no one to care for or prune them and yet, many hardy varieties will keep on for many years growing tall and gnarly but toughing it out none the less.   In my area I found four good sites in only one afternoon, driving around the back roads earlier this fall.   All the places I found were directly on the roadside, though I've seen many trees on lawns and some small, old, orchards.   I have yet to get up the nerve to visit the owners of these sites and ask if I might take some of their fruit off their hands, and frankly this year I wouldn't have had the time to process it all anyways.

So to begin, I had found the fruit, but most of it was out of reach. So next. I had to dive into my basement of many wonders and with some scavenged parts from a display my workplace was throwing out, the wire portion of an election sign, a screw, a torch, some copper wire, paperclips and an old sheet I made a make-shift, if perfectly serviceable expanding pole picker.  It has a long "sock" attached so that the apples can roll gently down the length of the fabric tube to the ground and into a bag at my hip... it keeps them from falling on my head and from getting bruised in the process.

Now because these apples were ripening a bit at random I had to freeze a bunch that were going to go too mushy on me, but once I had what I thought was "enough" it was time to really get to work.

The work planned is cider.... hard cider.  Now I have made a few different hard ciders before and the cost per carboy 5-6 gal is usually in and around $35-$65 depending on where I have sourced my cider from.   In Ontario, Wellesley cider is one of the few that is sulphate and sorbate free, which is essential if you want to go and turn it into an adult drink.    This time the aim is to buy/make all the gear needed for less than that.   In effect to turn my yearly costs into a one time cost without going over budget. 

Now... to be fair, I already own a small press used in jewellery and metal forming.  It is a very solid steel frame with plates that move up and down in it, under the power of a 20 ton car jack... I have seen similar setups made in wood, using a car jack that you often find with your spare tire in your trunk.   Commercial cider press' can be found new online from about $200, so, for now that is just not an option.

Now to convert my small press to make the most of its space and to suit me I went with a style of pressing that involves stacking fabric enclosed layers of ground apples.

So I made the frame out of 1/2" x 1" pine about 7"x8" rectangle, a board of the same footprint for the top of the press and I cut a bit of 2x4 to fill in the center to distribute the weight of the press across the board. With some aluminum I had kicking around I formed up a pan to fit all this, with an open side formed to make a spout. Then I hunted down the last of the fabric that I have made the pole picker from and tore it into three squares with a bit left over.    Excellent, so with the gear prepared, now back to the free produce.

So food processor at the ready, I split and pulverized my first batch, 5 lbs seemed good.  A pound at time made a nice batch and all of it filled a juice jug to the 2L mark.

Now step by step here's how it went for me.

Lay down some plastic craft sheet the kind kids use to "sew" patterns on. 

this let me shimmy things a round a bit so all the layers lined up and allow the juice to flow through.  On very large cider presses they use slatted wood frames to do the same job, but this is all about what I had on hand in the basement and this one sheet cut down perfectly in for pieces and it was a leftover from my last soapmaking workshop.

line frame with  cotton sheet, centered

fill frame with apple mush

fold over left and right then bottom and top

lay down another piece of plastic

put frame on top of first one and repeat

lay board on top, no pressure is being added yet

now a bit of a squeeze, slow and steady means less blowouts of the cotton bundles

Now a bit of a note on blow outs... if your cotton starts to stretch or bulge unevenly, go slow... heck go slow anyway.   But when you do hear a pop and see your apple mush go flying in one direction or another don't stress.  Just make sure the next time you use that piece of fabric that the tear needs goes under the where the apple mush (pommace) will go and then lay a scrap of cloth over the tear before you add in the mush. This essentially patches the problem putting the tear somewhere where there is no more stress on it.  I could have washed and saved this fabric when it was done but honestly by next year I will invariably have more sheets and such that will have been retired to rags and I will have "fresh" ones for next year.

had to add another board

needed a bigger cup this is one L and it was only halfway to done

nearly all the juice is out

pomace left over, it was dry and compressed 

a stack of a days hard work

I tried a meat grinder from pricess auto for $25, to see if there was a power free way to do this and although the pieces were very big it made nearly the same volume of cider per batch so it seems that the pressure is more important than the fineness of the ground apples.

1.52 on the hydrometer means that if/when it brews dry it will be about 6.2% abv 

Total weight of apples and pears 51lbs, 16 L cider. 

 I pitched a package of lavlin ec-1118 champane yeast into water and then mixed it in and now a day later the little yeasty beasties are burping away happily turning sugars into alcohol and CO2.  They will keep on doing the hard work for a few more weeks and then I will likely be doing parts of this batch as a spiced seasonal and the rest finishing in the bottles as a sparkling cider.

total in new purchases = $38.85

wood $2.15

meat grinder $25

yeast $0.75

new hydrometer (the last one broke in the move) $11

Not bad all in all and next year, this should only cost me .75 cents or so plus, lets be honest, a fair bit of time, but it's been more than worth it for me this year.

Onions are no reason to cry

I've been wanting to try this for a while, but I had to wait to pull the last of the onions up out of the garden before I had enough skins to make my 10:1 ratio. The golden orange hues I've seen online were more than enough incentive for me to wait till I had enough saved to make a lovely, deep colour.  I was in no way disappointed by my results.  The silk was my favorite, making and rich coppery sheen, the cotton was and bit mellow for my tastes but that's the way cotton is sometimes.

Set 50 gr onion skins in hot water, keep on low 5 hrs  Onion skins on the low just before straining 

Mordent 30 g wool 12 g cotton, 1 hr

Strain out onion skins

Simmer together 1 hr, soak over night Wring out in morning Wash and dry again



Onion skin on silk cotton and wool



walnuts

Walnuts make everything brown, sidewalks, you, your gloves, your kitchen, your floor, your hair, walnuts do not care. They will substantively dye just about anything you put in their path that is permeable.

That said, they make a very nice warm chocolate brown on wool with out much fuss or muss and there is the added bonus of having some tasty food as a side benefit... brownies with walnuts any one?

There are three really good ways I have read to deal with separating the husks from the nuts.

1. Find a walnut tree on a gravel road, passing cars will run over the nuts squishing off the hulls and leaving the nuts intact.
2. Take a 1x4 board and drill out a walnut sized hole. Center the nut and hit it though the hole with a hammer, ideally, dropping the nut into a bucket and leaving the husk behind for your dyeing adventures.
3. Find shoes you don't care about being stained and a piece of concrete or asfault that will also get stained. Lay the nuts on the ground and roll your foot across them, one at a time, till the husk separates fron the nut.

You have now, hopefully, been adequately warned that these things STAIN!  Yes? and you will listen and beware, and wear gloves from the moment you pick them up off the ground! Okay?  Now to take advantage of that wonderful staining feature.

• de-husk walnuts  

• weight up 400g of husks and chop up roughly
• soak covered in water for 4 hours

• mordent 45 g wool 10 g cotton in 25% alum to fiber weight, on low
• wring out wool and cotton and submerge and simmer for 1 hour in enameled pot

• wring out the next morning

• hang to dry for a day 
• wash till water runs clear

Cotton, wool dyed with walnut husks 

Goldenrod again, now with iron...

I was out this last weekend on Sept 23rd, hunting down some milkweed fluff for stuffing a pillow (details to come) and on the small expressway hillside where I found the milkweed, was also some still blooming goldenrod.  Also, on my way home, I gathered lots of fresh black walnuts and added those to my backpack as well, but that for the next post.

The process is much the same as before, though I think I should have stayed with my normal 8 parts fresh to 1 part fiber.  The colour is not as vibrant as the last batch, the three things that have changed from abatch to batch are: harvest time, simmer time and % of plant to fiber. Unfortunetly, since the season for these is nearly over, this mystery will wait till next year.

gather and weight goldenrod flowers 1200g simmer covered with water for 2 hr in aluminum pot strain out plant matter and divide remaining fluid into two aluminum pots Mordent 100 g wool and two silk scarfs in 25g alum Add alum to both dyebaths, add 1 tsp iron to 1 pot

Simmer 1 hr, wring out in morning dry for a day and wash in lots of rainwater (4-5 rinses) after washing with soap (rainy weather makes for more water in my rain barrels than I can use in the garden.) Viola, a pale sunshine yellow (just goldenrod and alum)  and a nice yellow-green.  though now that I look at it on the screen, I know the colours are a little darker than they appear in the photos, but the hues are correct. goldenrod with alum, modified with iron

Pear leather

 I made fruit leather this week, thanks to the generosity of two friends, one who has extended me a very long loan of her dehydrator (I store it for her in my cold celler) and a wonderful lady and her fella who were willing make room for, and bring, a big tote bag of free pears back on a return trip of 300km from their parents backyard up north.

Pear leather is a delicious and simple snack that is much like fruit roll-ups only made with real food and nothing else.

My recipe does not have many measurement, because it's always based on what fruit I can find at any given time.  This is a good thing to do with windblown apples and wild harvested fruit, items that might be to tough or tart to eat out of hand can be really good if you just find the right way to process them. You can easily cut away bruised areas and adjust flavors by adding other fruit.

• Wash core and slice all fruit

• zest and juice 2 lemons to brighten flavor
• Add a tiny bit of water to get things started

• Cook covered 30 min on med-low (yes, the pizza stone above is my lid)
• Mash up some more and open up the pot to begin thickening sauce
• Season with cinnamon and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

• Puree with stick blender when everything is soft 
• Cut parchment paper to fit dehydrator trays

• Pour 2 cups of sauce per tray, smooth out evenly in tray, keeping back from the fan holes
•  stack 4 high 

• Dehydrate for 12 hrs YMMV till firm and translucent and not too sticky (above image is only 1/2 done)

• Slice each tray into 4 
• each piece has apx the same calories as a 1/2 cup of applesauce and it is far easier to eat on the go or carry hiking or backpacking

Enjoy with friends!

Root of the Madder

Well a wonderful place out of time called Pensic allowed me to pick up all of the mordents that I could need for my early experiments.   Also, I have been enchanted while searching the web, by all of the examples of madder dyeing I had seen, so in the same booth I picked up a 4 oz bag.

 Now, not having a good idea of the concentrations need for many of these experiments I have been using a 1 part fiber (by weight) to 8 parts fresh plant materials.   With this being a dry and fairly concentrated dye stuff I went with 1:1 ratio with the dried, powdered roots.

So the steps...

mordent wool 115 g and 15g cotton with 1 tbls of alum 1 hr

bring powdered madder (4 oz) in a silk bag up to just under 80'c but no higher, over 1.5hr in water with 1 tbs washing soda

add wool keep at below 80'c 1 hr, open bag 1hr let cool over night

squeeze out excess and dry, shake out root dust when dry, wash and then dry again

madder, last two on far right

Now this was not as dark as I would have liked, but I have read in a few places that the longer you mordent your fibers the better the dye is taken up, especially with madder.  So just for the heck of it I froze my very dark red dyebath and I will follow the advise of a few recipes and mordent my wool for a few weeks (yikes).  Though I may stage it up so that in one dyebath I can show yarns that have been in the mordent bucket for 1, 2 and 3 weeks.  This could be a real/interesting experiment, now to find a spare bucket.

The woe's of woad

Last spring I purchased woad seeds from Richters Herbs ( Then later got razzed by a friend for paying good money for weeds, when she knew someone who has way, way, more seeds, than she could ever hope to plant.)  Any how they grew fairly well in the full sun spot where I planted them. Then, after spending all that time growing them and tenderly weeding them, I decided to rush right in and try to dye some wool using a direct dye method outlined in Rita Buchanan's "A weavers garden".  To be fair she does say that results can vary in a range from brown-blue to grey-blue, but what I unfortunetly got was a very light tan with lovely greeny yellow over tones (that mostly washed out)

 Needless to say whatever I did or did not do wrong, I will not be repeating this rash and direct method again.  In a few days or a few weeks if the weather is fair, just before the first frosts I will gather all the leaves that have regrown on the plants and extract the indigo pigments to be used in a "sig vat" later...  then maybe I will have some images of success to show.   Till then here are some glimpses of the whole sad affair.  

"Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you."