Off to California

Off to California (in the morning.....)

Cider is made (7,000 L happily bubbling away), we (Welsh Mountain Cider) have finished our last market for the season and we're just running around finishing last minute jobs before we leave.

Before we leave we'll need to turn off our wind turbine and drain our water system down in case it gets really cold.  I've wrapped up our remaining stock in bottles really well, so hopefully all will be okay while we're away (the cold has only been a problem when it's been -18 for a few weeks, and I don't think that's likely this year ).  We've got a new security system at our cider shed and nice neighbors to keep an eye on things, but it's still feels weird leaving.

Welsh Mountain Cider Best Dressed Stall at Royal Welsh Winter Fair

The weather has been crazy here.  The wind is blowing, it's been off and on pouring rain, hailing and occasionally snowing.  We haven't blown away yet (I'm not sure about Paul and Steve, I haven't seen them yet today), but I'm not convinced that we won't one of these days.  When your home is a 36' showman's wagon, and you only have outdoor compost toilets,  you become much more intimate with the weather, especially in the Welsh hills at 1250 feet.
It is great having wind, I'm not complaining.  It has been so still this summer and autumn that we've been having to run the generator more than I'd like for power.  Now we've got three banks of full batteries and plenty of power for our central heating so we've got a super toasty home.

View of Prospect Orchard from Moelfre

Everything here is so much a part of us it is hard to get away.  My polytunnel is filled with lovely salad and winter greens.  We've got sacks and sacks of potatoes, tons of leeks and lots of other lovely fruit and veg to eat.  Salad keeps going really well in the winter polytunnel, so I know that it'll all still be here when I get back, and we've got a freezer full of fruit and veg as well that will wait for my return.  I'm hoping I don't have any break down and cry because there is no real food in the supermarket moments again this trip, but I have a feeling it might happen at least once.

Winter Salad

But I am really looking forward to going back to California and seeing all of my lovely friends and family!!!  I can't believe it has been two years since I've been back, it's the longest I've ever been away.  I hope everyone is as excited to see me as I am to see them.  I'm really looking forward to playing music with lovely folks, eating my weight in Mexican food and checking out some other California Cider makers. 

Blog Time

I've been meaning to start a band called Slack Ma Girdle since I first heard the name, but unfortunately, it is already taken.  I guess that it's too good of a name not to have been used by someone, and it is very fitting for a ceilidh band.  I guess I'll have to forgive them (and they have been going since 1995, years before even know what cider was.)

So the blog gets the name. Slack Ma Girdle Cider Blog.

I used to write a lot.  I have heaps of journals from the last fifteen years, but for some reason I have more or less stopped writing.  Bill asked me why I don't write anymore.  Is it because I'm happier now or less happy?  I certainly don't have less to write about.  I used journals as ways of working through issues, remembering travels, good times and bad.  My head is still full of ideas and thoughts and musings about the world, but for some reason, it's all just staying in my head or being voiced to my lovely husband or Paul and Steve and not being written down on paper.

Yet looking through my things I still have piles of full notebooks.  I always have one on the go.  But looking through the pages I no longer see teenage angst or rants about the world or poems about the joys of life and love.  All I see is apples.

Page after page is filled with lists of apples.

Annie Elizabeth, Tom Putt, Ball's Bittersweet, Captain Broad, Bloody Butcher, Pig Yr Wydd.......

Kingston Black, Dabinett, Yarlington Mill, Coleman's Seedling, Beauty of Cornwall......

If it's not lists of apples, pages will be filled with tasting notes.

Ben's red (Cider)
Very firm and attractive red apple.  Russet around stalk.  Mild astringency, mild acidity.  Well balanced cider apple.

Orleans Reinette (Late Dessert/Cooker)
Picked mid-December.
Green flushed red.  Slight russeting.  Fairly large, dual purpose apple.  Crisp, dense, chewy.  Sharp but sweet.

Or cider bottling records:
Winter Wamer 2012 - 720 bottles
Borders Bittersweet 2012  - 270 bottles
Hereford Redstreak/Bloody Butcher 2012 - 580 bottles

Page after page is filled with apples and cider (with the occasional list of tunes or music or shopping lists or packing lists).  I also have a gardening notebook with lists of seeds, planting dates, wish lists, garden plans etc.

When did this happen to me?  How did my journals turn from morning musings over coffee to lists of orchards and apples and cider.

If this sort of thing interests you, please follow my post.  There will be more to come of my life on a Welsh Mountain, making cider, growing trees, learning about apples, gardening, music, and all of strange things that make up my life as a Californian lady living in Mid-Wales.