Does anybody know where there's a working apple press in Mayo?

COUNTRYFILE

I HAD great plans for cider making this year. Such a thing has been a family tradition for longer than anybody can know.

My grandfather made it in vast, open vats that frothed yellow at the edge and attracted rats.

When it had finished fermenting, what was essentially apple-rat soup was poured into barrels and left until the lumps had settled to the bottom.

The remaining liquid was straw-coloured, viscous and sour. It was also extremely intoxicating, as all callers to the farm would testify.

My grandfather, and now my father, have passed away, and the lot has fallen to me to gather enough apples to make, perhaps not, 40 gallons of the stuff, at least enough to treat my friends to a glass of proper scrumpy.

Forty years ago, there was an old cider house in the North Devon market town of Barnstaple where, if they didn't know the reputation of a person, they would only allow them a half pint of the local brew.

If that went down reasonably well and all remained calm, another half might be permitted.

Strangers were watched closely, and there were many men 'entirely innocent' barred from that establishment for reasons they failed to understand or perhaps remember. Such is the power of properly made cider.

That noble (more would say ignoble) beverage was nothing like the weak and watery imitation on offer in bars around the country in these better educated times.

Meat and drink together, it was, and it fuelled the harvest workers through many along night of gathering crops in a climate near as capricous as our own.

So this year, in (partial) memory of those at whose elbow I quaffed, I am determined to follow as close I can in their footsteps and make my own. To that end, I went to visit my orchard, which this year is showing less than good promise.

If I recall correctly, our few weeks of spring were rather short on bees, which made pollination of the apple blossom largely unsuccessful.

And then we had weeks of cold and wet, which did little to encourage good growth of the fruit that did actually set. As a result, apples appear to be in short supply.

With little in the way of fruit to take energy from the trees, only branches have grown. I doubt that if all my apples were piled together they would amount to more than five gallons. Five gallons of apples will hardly yield a gallon of juice. It's a good job I don't have those 40-gallon barrels at my disposal.

Such a shortage was likely never known. There is no need to despair, not entirely, for just as I was bemoaning these very things to a friend, a certain gentle-lady appeared on the scene.

“Don't worry,” she said, “I've got loads of apples and all they ever do is fall on the ground. The birds get them. Come and take as many as you want.”

And so I shall. Now all I need is an apple press. The one in the granary back on the farm was a monstrous machine with a giant worm of elm that, when turned, crushed a full half-hundred weight of fruit between great oaken slabs.

What a day that was, when the apples were brought home! The full flow of thick and creamy juice was a sight to behold. So what if it attracted a full county's worth of wasps, and later those rats?

Cider-making was a centuries-old task, preparing an honorable, one-time essential that has become superfluous in our world of bubbles and ice in pint glasses.

If anybody knows of a working apple press, I should be glad to hear of it. We might work out a deal.