She's looking wider with cider inside her!

So, let's be real for a second.

     Life's way too fucking short. For me, it's too short to do all of the things I want to do. It's also too expensive. I'm broke. Like, still keeping my head above water, paying bills and still-buying-fancy-coffees kind of broke, but really only living on borrowed money.

     It wasn't any better when I was making $16 an hour as a bookkeeper. More things were paid on time, but I had no time to enjoy my dog, no time to crochet slippers, no time to walk in the woods and no time to bake cookies and have nice meals with my husband. What kind of living is that?

That's bullshit living is what that is!

     So, as you are no doubt aware, I was working at the County Cider Company for a few weeks. Which was awesome - frustrating dealing with tourists, but awesome nonetheless. However, the pizza oven closed down on Canadian Thanksgiving Monday about two weeks ago. Bye Bye Tips... I miss you terribly :'(

Don't cry for me, Large and Teenie. The truth is, I never left cider.

All through these broke times. My crazy whimsies.

I kept on working. I go the distance!

....Sorry, I had a brief Andrew Lloyd Weber moment there. Back to business...

     Now I am doing three things: Retail, Pressing and Bottling. Retail is fairly simple and self-explanatory. I offer people tastings of all the cider products we sell. I have met more people from more countries all over the world in the last two weeks than I have EVER met before. And, of course, I have more opportunity to talk with them about life in these countries and make connections with them than I ever did as a busy server. 

     Turns out, people like to talk about themselves and what they do and where they're from. 

     Huh. That was a light bulb moment for me, despite the fact that I clearly like to talk about myself and what I do and where I'm from.

   Did you know: People from Normandy used to serve cider in pitchers with every meal. And, Germans (not unlike Canadians) are very different depending on what part of Germany they come from, but they all know about Apfelwein. Some Scots speak a completely different language - Doric. I can't understand a fecking word of it (Ken Fit a Mean?) I feel like I've traveled the world without leaving work!

     But, being fascinated by all things new and interesting, I was anxious to research the beginnings of hard cider. How it's made; where it gets it's subtle flavours; what tools are required to make the beverage I have been serving up.

Chris and the Lifty Thingy

     First of all, sorting and pressing apples is dirty work. I wore my sweats and brought my gloves. The apples arrived in the barn in huge wooden crates via tractor. Then, they put it on a hydraulic lifty thingy so we could dump the apples slowly onto the conveyor belt. This is a bit of an art because apples don't roll out as nice and even as you would like. They either fall too slowly and you stand there with one finger up your ass doing nothing, or they come out hundreds at a time and then the conveyor belt won't work.

     Anyone who has seen the Lucille Ball episode where she is working in a chocolate factory and the chocolate is coming out too fast can imagine my dilemma. When the apples poured out too fast, I just grabbed handfuls and handfuls of apples. The rotten ones were flying behind me, mushy apples were getting in my hair, I mostly tried to push them to the next person in line so THEY could deal with it.

     And, when I'm talking about rotten apples, you don't even KNOW! I'm talking black, shriveled up chunks of penicillin. I'm talking, sat-on-your-counter-in-a-plastic-bag-for-weeks, full of weird little larva and smelling like fermented fruit (obvsly).

     From there, the good apples went through a washing machine and then got chopped up to itty bits and put in a holding bin, where they were sucked up through a hose and deposited into the accordion press. The press got so much juice out of the apples, the leftovers looked like pressboard, known as "pomace". And, the cider went through another hose to a huge holding tank.

Billy and the itty bits

     When I got home after seven hours of sorting apples, lifting filthy crates of rotten apples, I smelled horrible. Like I was dipped in apple cider vinegar two months ago and hadn't had a bath yet. The old man wouldn't even give me a "welcome home" kiss!

     My next stop on the cider-making train was the bottling facility. I heard everyone likes it there because you don't have to deal with people and it's quiet... until the capper breaks the bottles and glass goes flying and people die from exsanguination. This has never happened. Well, the capper breaks, but people have never died. I'm not even sure they've been cut. In my mind, it is a disaster. I just crossed my fingers and hoped they wouldn't put me in front of the capping machine.

Accordion Press

     That's exactly where they put me. I walked in the door and my first station was the capper, ffs. My job was simply to make sure there was a cap on every bottle as it left my station, make sure there were caps coming through the machine properly (not getting stuck) and make sure the bottles didn't fall over before they got to the capper. Basically, I had to watch the machine do all the work.

     I was there less than five minutes when one of the bottles smashed! It sounded like an Alka Seltzer commercial - there was a loud POP POP of breaking glass and then a FIZZ FIZZ from the sound of cider spray... there was no relief. Not for me. I just stood there like an idiot while Sean grabbed the surrounding bottles so they wouldn't continue to go through the glass shards. He then yelled for Amanda, who rushed to clean up the mess, all while the rest of the process continued to move along. I just watched, horrified. 

     My one job (to make sure there was a cap on every bottle) sounds like an easy enough task, right? Wrong. You watch one hundred bottles go by every minute and see if they don't start to look alike - cap or no cap. Sean had to watch my station, as well as his own, and occasionally grabbed an uncapped bottle as it moved along the line. After a couple of hours, though, I became an expert Chief Looker and Bottle Watcher. Since then, I have manned the bottle drying and labeling station and the packing station. They may even invite me back. 

     The important thing, from my perspective, is that I am continuing to learn knew things and meet new people and make connections. Life IS way too short and I want a path that takes short cuts and scenic routes, through orchards and assembly lines, along my journey.