09/09/2025
Generally, we love our apple suppliers, all the people who have surplus apples in their gardens and orchards, who supply us with their fruit ... and given that we don't own any orchards, we are rather dependent on them. In return for their fruit our suppliers get free juice or cider.
The vast majority of fruit we get is top notch, ripe, excellent quality, always UNSPRAYED and uncontaminated from chemicals, a quick rinse and off to the mill ... it takes us about a minute to wash and mill a crate of these apples, a little less if the apples are small, a little longer with larger sized apples.
Occasionally, we do come across a bag of fruit where it seems folk have trouble making a distinction between apple and leaf, which is a bit of a nuisance as it adds time to the whole process. For clarity, we're after the fruit, not the leaves and twigs. And it's a pain ... takes about 2 to 4 minutes to sift through and remove the leaves from a crate of apples so inflicted.
Rarer still, from time to time, we appear to be regarded as a rotten apple disposal service. Again, for clarity, we are makers of cider and apple juice, not a waste disposal service. Depending on how bad the fruit is, we may dispose of the whole lot - no free juice or cider for the donor - or we take 5+ minutes to sort out the ripe from the rotten, get messy and fed up, begin to think there are many, many better ways to spend out time!
