Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children
Number 606
Cider
Hello Everyone
And now, this week, l would like to give you an update on the Rocky Bay Community Orchard.
All is going very well.
There are people visiting the orchard most days of the week when the weather allows, and many friendships have strengthened with the opportunity to get together to work, chat and eat.
Working outside in the fresh air, being with nature and having fresh produce to eat is all good for mental health as well as physical health.
There are apples, pears, cherries, damsons, greengages and plums to pick.
We also have some crab apples and cobnuts too now.
There are also a few different berries to pick at different times of the growing season.
We have noticed that the size of the crops from our trees vary from year to year.
You might find that you get a good apple crop every other year almost like the trees like a bit of a rest between giving us a large harvest; but of course a big factor that affects the crops will be the weather.
The weather in the spring will be especially important because we must have good blossom to produce good fruit. When your crop grows outside you are very hopeful that the weather will be kind to you.
We have lots of different species of fruit trees. Different people like different sorts of types of apple, pear and cherry but sometimes the trees need different species to cross pollinate with. You need to know how that works when you buy trees for your own garden or orchard – especially when you only have a few, because they will need to work well together in that way.
We have so many apples, they can’t all be eaten at the time they are picked at harvest time, so they are stored for the winter and there are different ways of doing this.
They can be pureed and frozen or made into apple pies and then frozen like that.
They can be wrapped individually in newspaper and put into a dry apple store.
They can be juiced and the juice put into large milk containers. These can be put in the freezer. But you have to remember to leave a gap at the top of the juice to allow for expansion as the liquid freezes.
Some people even had a go at making their own cider. They got quite competitive about it actually!
Cider is a very old, traditional drink and it is believed that Neolithic Britons were fermenting crab apples from a native species of tree up to 5,000 years ago.
Modern cider is very popular today and Britons drink 40% of all the cider produced in the world. lt had a big resurgence of popularity at the beginning of this century.
Old orchards in history were planted in rough grass. The trees are dotted about at random and some of the old trees could grow to be immensely tall. You needed an extremely long ladder to get to the fruit at the top.
ln modern orchards, the trees are much smaller so that the fruit can be more accessible, and the trees are planted in rows which does not look nearly as romantic, but it is easier to pick the crop with modern farming methods.
A machine grabs the trunk of the tree and in a very tight, controlled way and will then shake the fruit from the branches. ln a few seconds, and the sound of a lot of thumping, the ripe fruit is all down on the ground.
ln the west of England, orchards contain apples especially grown for making cider, they have a lot of tannin in them. ln the east of the country the cider tends to be made with eating and cooking apples, so it tastes different.
Picking the apples can happen over a few weeks because different varieties might ripen at different times. The first harvest is called the first press.
The apples are taken from the orchard, washed, chopped up and then pressed in a special contraption called an apple press. The juice runs out of the press into a receptacle at the bottom. lt is really fun to watch.
lt takes four or five apples to make a pint of cider.
The juice is fermented with yeast and left to mature for a few months.
lt is the skill of the cider maker and their choice of apples and yeast, that makes different products.
Some ciders are stronger than others; you can have still or fizzy cider; clear or cloudy cider.
lf you don’t want to drink an alcoholic beverage made out of apples, you can drink verjuice.
This is a juice that is pressed out of a mix of different types of apples. The beauty of this is that the apples don’t have to be completely ripe to make it which means that if you have an orchard with lots of different types of apples ripening at different times, you can pick them all at the same time and make a product out of them.
You can add herbs and spices to the juice as well if you like.
Bill and Bob sometimes like cinnamon in their apple juice.
Try it and see what you think.
Bye bye everyone – don’t forget to subscribe to my blog!
Love and kisses
Salty Sam
www.christina-sinclair.com
Bill and Bob’s Joke of the Week
Bill: What did one bed bug say to the other bed bug?
Bob: lf you fall through the mattress, l’ll see you in the spring.
Salty Sam © Christina Sinclair 2015
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of material from this blog without express and written permission from this blog’s author and owner is strictly prohibited.
Links may be used to www.christina-sinclair.com
Picture Gallery
Cider orchard
Apple harvest
The art of cider making is very old
A small apple press
THE SALTY SAM NEWS DESK
Emily’s mum is very house-proud, and when Emily said she wanted to grow a lot of little trees in her garden, Emily’s mum said no.
Bill, Bob, Emily and Henry started collecting tree seeds again as soon as they saw them ripening on the trees this autumn.
She had seen the mess Bill and Bob had made in their garden and she didn’t want the same thing in her garden.
They had flower pots and raised beds all over the place. Bill and bob’s mum doesn’t mind too much because she is very busy with her shop and as far as she is concerned she just needs enough room to get to the washing line and out of the back gate.
Every mum is different.
Emily was very disappointed because she wanted to join in with Bill and Bob’s tree growing scheme.
Then Auntie Alice had a quiet word.
She told Emily’s mum that children naturally made a mess and if they were kept too confined they could feel that they could not express themselves, experiment and grow.
Auntie Alice had had an idea.
Emily’s mum agreed to it and Captain Jack and I got roped in to help out. Bill and Bob came to help too so that they could learn more wood-working skills after we made some bird nesting boxes together a few weeks ago.
We made Emily a wooden box using our wood-working skills to corral her plants into and set it up in the bottom corner of the garden.
She was told to keep her flower pots lined up within the box to keep them all neat and tidy and contained inside the box in rows.
We painted it with bright colours to make it jolly for children to use.
It looked just like a sand box.
In fact, the walls kept the pots upright so that they did not fall over when the wind started blowing.
Emily could water the pots in dry weather and then the rain watered them in wet weather.
She was told that she could put any number of pots in the box and grow anything she wanted in them; but she just had to keep them inside the box to keep the garden tidy.
It was a very good compromise to keep both Emily and her mum happy.
Bill and Bob were happy too because they had more trees growing in their tree growing scheme.
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Quick Quiz
Do you know what these words mean?
- opal
- octagon
- occidental
- occult
- orangery
- opulent
- olfactory
- osprey
- ominous
- offspring
lt’s the Weekend!
HOW TO MAKE A SNUGGLY WlNTER SCARF
You will really need to be a good knitter by now to make this scarf.
You need to be the kind of knitter that can pick up any stitches you might drop without difficulty and be able to keep a good rhythm when you are changing between plain and purl stitches.
This is similar to last week’s scarf but will be narrower because of the different pattern used.
You may find it helpful to use a row marker to denote the right side of the scarf and, therefore, where you start your first row of pattern from.
If you don’t have a row marker, you can use a paper clip or a tiny piece of yarn or a contrasting colour that you can tie in to the edge and keep moving it up as you knit so that it is always in sight below your right hand.
You will need three whole 100g balls for the adult scarf. Make sure to check that every ball you pick up has the same dye batch number on the ball band.
If you are making a present for a man, you might want to choose a dark colour, but dark colours are more difficult to knit with; you may want to choose a dark blue or brown rather than black.
If you are knitting a scarf for a small child, you could buy just two 100g balls.
This pattern won’t suit stripes very well unless you don’t mind the colour change being obvious.
This scarf will take a long time to make, so you had better get started now if you want it by the time the cold winter weather comes!
SCARF FOR ADULT AND LARGE CHILD (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and dk yarn cast on 62 stitches
Slip 1 (knit 1, purl 1) repeat the last 2 stitches until 1 stitch remains, knit 1
Repeat the last row 3 times
Slip 1 (purl 1, knit 1) repeat the last 2 stitches until 1 stitch remains, purl 1
Repeat the last row 3 times
Just keep knitting until you have your scarf as long as you want it.
Repeat the last 8 row pattern until the yarn is running out or it is as long as you want it to be and cast off.
SCARF FOR SMALL CHILD (KNIT ONE)
Using 4mm knitting needles and dk yarn cast on 52 stitches
Slip 1 (knit 1, purl 1) repeat the last 2 stitches until 1 stitch remains, knit 1
Repeat the last row 3 times
Slip 1 (purl 1, knit 1) repeat the last 2 stitches until 1 stitch remains, purl 1
Repeat the last row 3 times
Repeat the last 8 row pattern until the yarn is running out or it is as long as you want it to be and cast off
You will probably use up both balls of yarn.
Making your own clothes means you can make items with colours that match into your existing wardrobe.
You can put tassles on the ends, if you want to.
Please note that the material on this blog is for personal use and for use in classrooms only.
It is a copyright infringement and, therefore, illegal under international law to sell items made with these patterns.
Use of the toys and projects is at your own risk.
©Christina Sinclair Designs 2015
Quick Quiz Answers
- opal – a semi-precious stone
- octagon – an eight-sided figure
- occidental – relating to the western countries of the world
- occult – hidden
- orangery – a glass house where orange trees are grown
- opulent – grand and expensive
- olfactory – relating to the sense of smell
- osprey – a bird of prey
- ominous – threatening
- offspring – children
