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 realized among other things, that it is time to renew my water proof gear which, after four season is finished (close to 300€). It is also not just 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 the cloths under the car trunks door. All these things are kind of part of bigger mo his hisaic. 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 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) so you stop just once if possible and get it out but also you 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 car. So bringing the bags by ten with car to the edge of the orchard on 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. For the most difficult one, I had to get help from the owner and
