News 2023 12 04
Greetings to all, it took a while but finally, the first part of 2023 cider season, autumnal harvest and transformation of apples into moût, juice, is done. Before we go through the numbers a bit, lets share some general impressions. First of all, it was wet. Most likely, this was the worst season which I did since 2016 when I started helping Christophe Bouvet from Ferme du Vastel. It is not just about raining virtually every day except the lovely opening, ten days, at the beginning of the season. It made me realize among other things, that it is time to renew my water proof gear which, after four season of heave usage is just finished (close to 300€). It is also not only about coming back to our caravans and the party tent through the "valley of mud", having to take most of the breaks inside of the car, bringing to a perfection changing of the cloths under the car trunks door. All these things are kind of part of bigger mosaic. What I've found personally really stressful and challenging, were the logistic issues. If you have a good weather and the orchard is dry, then you can pick up your apples, put them in the bags, leave them all around orchard and then just drive in with car and trailer and load it all in. However when the weather is bad like this year, then you need to harvest already in a manner that not only all the bags are clustered all together, which means you have to bring the baskets all the way to that spot from all around, so you stop just once if possible, facing downhill with the front of the car of course. You also have to think that you are likely not to be able to enter the orchard with trailer at all and in some cases, you can not make it even with the car. So bringing the bags by ten with car to the edge of the orchard to the harder ground is must and extra work because you have to load it in, unload it and load it again to the trailer later on. If the orchard is too steep, car doesn't work and you have to get all the apples out on your back. In some cases, I got help from my friend Hugo and his four wheel drive but even that one did not work for some orchards this year. For the most difficult one, I had to get help from the owner and his tractor but also it was on the edge. All these things add to the work load and are decreasing the efficiency of harvesting. But enough lamenting about the negatives and lets share some positive moments and happenings. It was very nice to spend the beginning of the season with Leon, who helped me a lot with preparing the orchards. When he has left, my girlfriend, Julia, came and we have done most of the season together, with occasional help from friends in the region. Due to the fact, that this season was very rich on apples, it helped enormously with keeping up with harvesting the fallen apples on time so they don't get bad. It is kind of paradox, that I personally consider this season best done so far from the perspective of preparation of the orchards, harvesting on time apples which are still in good condition and pressing having minimal waste during the process. Still it is by percentage a season with biggest losses reaching close to 30% compared to our usual around 10% average. Why? Well several reasons. One reason was a combination of very rich year on apples as mentioned before and very bad weather, all explained above. Secondly, even with help, physical strain by the end of the season was getting really high. Third, very important, limited budget. I've expected big year and I tried to prepare funds to cover it. However the change from paid labour to working for myself which I did last February resulted in decent increase of funds from sales but overall the amount of cash flow decreased. Last but not least, there was no place really left in the cave for my cider, all the cuves, fermentation vessels, except one were full and I did not have time and money to invest in more cuvery.
