From Exeter Flying Post no. 304 December 2007

Paul Vincent investigates a Devon tradition

On this cool Sunday afternoon there is a smell of dry fallen leaves as we walk down a rough farm track. We are following the sound of a tractor engine and the growling of an apple crushing machine. At the end of the track a gathering of vehicles – cars, flat-bed trucks and trailers frame an untidy scene of old wooden barrels and heavy-duty plastic bags full of apples. A dozen people stand chatting outside an open-fronted shed, while others are busily engaged inside, emerging from the darkness every now and then, carrying buckets of delicious-smelling liquid.

This scene is in mid-Devon in late autumn, as friends and neighbours get together, pooling their bags of windfall apples they have brought over, joining the communal task of turning ripe fruit into juice. In the evening they will return home with their ­barrels, leaving them undisturbed until the warmth of next spring, when they will be broached for the fresh strong cider they contain.

Inside the shed the activity is focused and urgent. The bagfuls of apples, cider varieties mixed with sweet dessert apples, are poured into the crusher, its jaws driven by a drive belt powered by the tractor. Out at the bottom comes a supply of crushed fruit, shoveled up by two men, and ­transported to the cider press, a looming giant of a thing at the back of the shed. Two or three people are standing on bales of straw on all four sides of the press, ­spreading each shovel-load of mush as it is tossed onto each new frame of straw they are busy constructing.

They are building what is known as a cheese, a broad square tower of straw with crushed apple, bound by the long stalks into twelve layers up to a height of five feet or so. The straw is the same as grown for thatching houses: grown without pesticides and harvested by hand to preserve its full length.

The process is simple, but it needs to be done carefully and evenly, so that the cheese rises firm and upright. One man is in charge, judging when it is ready to start a new layer, supervising the ratio of straw to apple, and calling for the straw to be folded over at the edges when the layer is ­complete, to keep the juice and pulp from leaking out when the pressing begins. The cheese is built up using a square wooden frame, which is raised each time a layer is completed. When finished, the cheese is a perfectly formed block ready to receive the weight of the press. It takes about two hours to build the cheese, so the team is refreshed from time to time as everyone takes a turn.

When the cheese has reached its maximum height there is a short lull, and silence as the crushing machine is rested. For a moment, the only sound in the shed is the trickle of apple juice already flowing out into a half-barrel below the press. There are murmurs of approval from the company present: a beautiful looking cheese! Mugs are filled with fresh juice, mixed or not with a little cider from last season.

At the top of the press, a wooden bar is inserted into a capstan to lever down the heavy iron press onto the cheese. Two men heave the bar round a half turn, and the plate squeezes into the tower of apple and straw. They repeat the action several times, until it is too hard to push the bar any more. The juice comes flowing out at the bottom of the press, and new helpers form a chain with buckets, carrying the liquid and decanting it, through straw-lined funnels, into the mouths of the wooden barrels. After a short time the press can be screwed down further, and the juice starts to flow again. The process is repeated at lengthening intervals over hours, even days, to obtain as much juice as possible.

When the cheese has been fully pressed, it is just a quarter of its original size, and will have yielded 1½ cubic metres of apple juice, or nearly 300 gallons. During the next six months, and with no other treatment, this juice will turn itself into a strong rustic cider ready for drinking through next ­summer. Its alcoholic content is around 7-8%.

Like the old orchards that were once part of every small farm in Devon, cider presses are no longer a common feature of life in the countryside. However, while many orchards have vanished entirely, quite a few 19thC cider presses have simply remained dormant, undisturbed, awaiting a ­generation with renewed interest in the cider-maker’s craft.

For some it is a love of restoring old skills and machinery; for others it is the attractive thought of making a large amount of free alcohol. The seasonal occasion makes a lovely social event, and it’s all quite legal so long as you don’t sell it – and don’t make more than 7,000 litres year. At 7-8% that’s probably enough to get on with, anyway.

They always do it this time of year, take advantage of everyones' need to make new starts and resolutions to do constructive things in the new year. For 2008 you can get a part work which enables you to (eventually) build a metal model of the Flying Scotsman, £4.99 per week. So will this thing ever get built? by anyone? the component parts will come to you in a total of 125 weeks - so building the model will take you nearly two and half years at a cost of £619.24 - that's got to be nearly the time and money it took to build the original - and you have to buy the track and engine separately.

I tried a part work thing one new year, Quest it was called, scientific things, interesting short articles introducing the reader to scientific developments, with periodically produced ring binders to keep them in. I subscribed with the publisher so I didn't miss an issue and in case my newsagent stopped stocking them after a few issues. About eight issues in I got a letter from the publisher saying they were stopping publication of the title.

Will the Flying Scotsman part work publisher keep going for all 125 issues? We shall see . . .

Should people be allowed to leave full time education at 14 - retaining the right to take a further four years of state funded education later in life? A number of my school friends wished in later years they'd taken more notice of their education at the time, maybe they'd have done better if they'd taken it when they'd realised how useful it would be to them and had an idea why they wanted to - rather than being forced to do it a 15 and 16 years of age when they weren't that interested.

Most kids would probably stay on straight through, but a few might do better if able to go to work/apprenticeship and take their education later when they knew what they needed - or if settled in a profession, use the years for professional training or courses for interest. Not everyone is at their best with exams and qualifications although the current thinking seems to be that this is the only important thing. (Impossible to organise but wouldn't it be good if schools had to provide league tables showing their ex-pupils success in relationships, job satisfaction and social usefulness 5 and 10 years after leaving!)

Lets stop telling our kids that academic success is the only thing worth having, and value non-academic careers more. Where would we be without cleaners, waiting staff, shop workers, carers, plumbers, decorators, mechanics, public transport drivers - to name a few. Illegal immigrants are employed as cleaners because its a job most people don't want but if it was valued more and paid better then people would want the job. It's a vital job - but we'd only appreciate that if we shopped in filthy shops and worked in filthy offices and used uncleaned toilets.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world . . .
. . . those who understand binary
. . . and those who don't

Spent yesterday evening making Christmas oranges with cloves pushed into the skin to put on the radiators so they dry out and smell nice. We had a big bag of mandarins and a huge jar of cloves from Makro. Its strange how you can get to the age of 43 and still not have ever done some of these things - this was the first year I had done them (though Husband made some last year). Fingers got all sticky and covered in crumbled clove. This year was also the first year I'd ever made a guy for Bonfire Night.

We've also completed most of the shopping for Christmas, Husband is due to ice the cake soon and has been busy making jars of picked shallots (we had to buy the shallots this year but will hopefully be growing them next now we have the new vegetable patch sorted), fruit in alcohol and herb vinegars, all ranged along the kitchen windowsill looking decorative. Earlier in the year we also make sole gin from the sloes in the garden and they'll be ready for Christmas too.

Today I'm due to post off the last of the Christmas parcels (except the one for the kids). For my aunts we bought glass Christmas tree decorations from the Christmas markets (icicles, stars, balls and doves) in Bruges and Brussels which we visited when we went over to Belgium for the Tottenham v Anderlecht match in the UEFA cup. I've packed them up in silver starry boxes from Paperchase (they've just opened one in Exeter - hurray) with labels saying open immediately. I also finished decorating the Christmas tree in Mum's window (on the front of the house) all in white with white ribbons and flowers as well as balls and bells

All that's left to do now before Christmas is to plant the broad bean seeds so they'll be ready for early spring, need a bit more topsoil for the vegetable patch so probably a trip down to B&Q Warehouse one evening this week required. We got the bird feeders up a week or so ago and they've started to get a lot of visitors, sparrows, great tits and blue tits so far. We also have a couple of regular grey squirrels. Not so many birds at the feeders on the front of the house despite there being a fair number of trees around. We also got the plum tree planted in the patch where we had the bonfire on Guy Fawkes night - dunno how long that'll take to start fruiting.

The following article is a regular column in the Exeter Flying Post by longstanding contributor Sinbad McCaffrey

The other day I was discussing rats with a friend of mine. She has lived in the country all her life and, though her exact age is moot, she is definitely past retirement. You see, I keep chickens - not a lot, but enough to have the splendid ability to convert food scraps into enough eggs for us.

Part of the original idea was to stop the rats that were living in our compost heap from having a source of cooked food. There are always rats about but if they find easy pickings they breed very fast, and you end up with tunnels and a problem with your neighbours. I was explaining that we had simply moved the rat problem from our compost heap to the chicken run, and that our new rat-trap was catching one or two a day, which I then had to drive up the road and release miles from anywhere.

She suggested that this was sentimental of me and that I should drown them or something, and I told her that last week we had trapped two large rats simultaneously and that one had killed the other. The surviving rat was very cross when I found it, and with many bites and scratches. This tale reminded her of what her father and many others used to do when there was a rat problem, and she explained how they used to create a Master Rat. I will tell you about it now, but first I must say that I have no intention of following her advice.

Rats are sociable creatures with sophisticated social rules and hierarchies and seem to be able to co-exist fairly peacefully in large numbers, but if they are stressed they become very aggressive. To create a Master Rat one must first catch a large and aggressive rat and put it in a bin with only a dish of water. When it is good and hungry you feed it a dead rat and so you go on. When it is really big you give it live rats that you have trapped and it gets a taste for them. Now you have a Master Rat, and, when you release it, it will then decimate its fellows and sort out your rat problem. I didn’t mention to my friend the worrying thought that now you had instead a huge and highly trained killer rat.

I thought also I would tell you about some research I came across recently. It was discovered, in the 2nd World War and during psychological research during the Vietnam War, that soldiers very rarely tried to kill the enemy during battle and that the great majority of enemy casualties were inflicted by just a few soldiers that aimed to kill. When psychologists investigated further they found there was a very strong, near universal, human inhibition to killing others, and that overcoming it often resulted in severe psychological problems later for the soldier involved.

Army strategists realised that this made a mockery of the majority of the army and that this inhibition led to a huge waste of effort. So they set about devising a way of training their men in ways to prevent this inhibition from affecting their ability to carry out their orders.

The first of the two main techniques was to train their men to fire at suddenly appearing, realistic, targets in chaotic conditions until it became an automatic response. The second technique was to use weapons and systems that allowed people to kill in a more disembodied way, and to train soldiers using simulators (sophisticated computer games). Thus the enemy becomes perceived as just another simulated target and the inhibition is circumvented in another way.

Of course this training may later be responsible for a far greater level of psychological trauma for the returning heroes, but by then they will be out of the army and of no further use.

It may be that this article does hang together after all.

Yours sadly, Sinbad McCaffrey.

The attached article is from the Exeter Flying Post and written by Ghee Bowman of the Global Centre at Exeter Community Centre

People move to Exeter all the time – it’s a part of living in a beautiful, prosperous part of the world. I moved here from London ten years ago, my mum came to England from Germany in the 1930s. Migration is a common human experience.

Exeter’s growing black and minority ethnic population is something to be celebrated on many levels - not only with the widening variety of restaurants and good shops. Recent letters in the Express & Echo seem to point towards the ethnic mix here as a problem, but for many of us it’s a cause of celebration and a learning opportunity.

The fact that Exeter schools have children speaking many different languages, that our mosque is growing fast and planning a new building, that the faces seen on the High Street are increasingly not just white ones – all these are signs of positive change. But there is an enormous amount of ignorance in Exeter and the wider county about people and their cultures, which can breed misunderstanding, fear and racism.

That’s where the Cultural Champions come in. A Cultural Champion is a Devon resident from another culture or religion, who comes into the classroom (or workplace or community or wherever) to give people an authentic, personal view of their culture. In this way, Devon children and Devon adults can learn about other cultures and people that live here, broadening their minds and breaking down barriers.

Cultural Champions come from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, and can deliver interactive sessions on a wide variety of topics – slavery, Islam, culture of Pakistan, ancient & modern Egypt, games from around the world, the list goes on. And because the Cultural Champions are local people talking about their own experience and their own culture, they can cut through the flannel that sometimes exists in inter-cultural situations and give clear, honest, personal answers.

The Cultural Champion programme is run by Devon Development Education from the Global Centre at Exeter Community Centre on St David’s Hill. Six Cultural Champions completed the training course last year, and are available now, for a negotiable fee. We’re currently seeking funding to run the course again this year – if you know of any possible sources, please let us know.

Feedback has been very positive. Penny Carvill from St Sidwell's school said: ‘Super lesson. Children totally on task. All were interested and motivated by presentation. Excellent props and resources. Great manner with children’. Amy Doherty of Exeter Woodcraft Folk said: ‘The henna hand tattoos and the samosa-making were very popular . . . thank you to Waqar for a really good evening’.

www.culturalchampions.org.uk

Well, last Saturday we got the vegetable patch built, three decking planks along the long edge and two along the short to hold the soil back. While husband did that I built the compost heap with premade slats sawn in a workshop for people with learning difficulties in Blackbird Leys. Feels so much better to have the compost heap at last, and I also put in the bird feeder poles and washed all the feeders. Now we have peanuts and high energy seed mix back and front of the house. Must get round to putting up the suet blocks as well. In the week I ordered a Victoria Plum tree off the net and today we went to B&Q and got hold of 12 bags of top soil for the vegetable patch (quite a lot of subsoil came up with building and also with shifting the slate that was all over this garden - so a bit of new top soil is a good idea) and a large bag of compost and some blood fish and bone to plant the tree with. Came home just before a big storm and planted trees and spread topsoil in the pouring rain before running back indoors for hot soup and toast and an afternoon devoted to Sky Sports (Exeter lost to Bury in the FA cup so no good draws like a couple of years ago with Man U).

During the shopping trip this morning we got the Christmas cake fruit too, after having to rummage through the shed and find my Rose Elliot Christmas Book for the recipe. So now there's a big brown plastic mixing bowl on the wine boxes on the kitchen windowsill with just over a kilogram of fruit soaking in sherry - smells lovely. I've always used the brown plastic bowl for this job, it's rubbish for mixing cakes as it's too light (and anyway these days I do all the hard work with the food processor) so as it's the only bowl I have big enough to take a whole Christmas cake for mixing. As a result I pour the cake into the fruit rather than the fruit into the cake. We've also got pickled shallots and pickled beetroot on the windowsill as husband has been busy in the last few weeks (and three or four litres of sloe gin in the cupboard).

Anyhow, ironing footie shirts for tomorrow whilst watching Back to the Future (again) so better go.