by Ezra Wallach, Sebastopol Times
Gather your apples! Your Honeycrisp! Your Fuji! Your Golden Delicious! Even your hopefully-ripe-by-now Gravensteins!
Why? Because, as of this past weekend, Slow Food Russian River’s (SFRR) Community Apple Press is up and running.
Situated on the grounds of the Luther Burbank Experiment Farm, their simple, timeless and efficient machine offers a free opportunity for residents living anywhere in the region to squeeze their own apples into fresh juice.
Following their appearance at the Gravenstein Apple Fair this coming weekend, Bob Burke will be leading the press operation, which he says was, for a decade, the only community-oriented press of its kind in the entire country before Petaluma Bounty added one of their own a couple of years ago.
A group of SFRR volunteers, which features a rotating cast of over 70 people, will operate the press on Saturdays and Sundays. Wanna-be juice makers can make a reservation for a 20-minute time slot. Each group can bring as many as 100 pounds of apples, although Burke’s team said that anything less than 150 pounds should be fine.
