Sunday 22 November 2009

The last Pressing

Well, we've been busy busy busy, pressing every apple in sight, so apologies for not keeping you up to date.

We made our last pressing yesterday. A mammoth 6 hour stint. We have produced a grand total of 1,711 bottles this year, almost double what we did last year.

Today we had fun moving the sheep, ha ha!

First we struggled to get them all into the pen for loading, they had gone in beautifully yesterday on the trial run, of course.

Next, the trailer wouldn't behave and it took twice as long to back it into the gateway a usual.

Then we almost lost the sheep back into the field, as the gatepost collapsed in the morass that used to be solid ground. With a lot of colourful words we remedied that and loaded the sheep.

And just to top it all, when we got back to the barn and tried reversing the trailer toward it, the ground was so wet that as it's on a slope, we just couldn't get the trailer to back, it kept sliding precariously toward the house, so we had to resort to beginner farmer tactics and make a 100 yard race with the hurdles.

But they are all now ensconced in the barn, snug a warm, ready to be sorted for the slaughter house tomorrow. Yum yum, roast lamb for Christmas dinner.