Update: The Gravensteins are coming: Slow Food Russian River

Community Rights, Health, News / August 24, 2020

Dear friends of apples.  Next week our drop day for apples for Manzana will be on Thursday, August 27.

 

Time: 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Location: St. Stephens’ Episcopal Church, 500 Robinson Road, Sebastopol

 

Thank you for all you do, and for your donations.  We hope you will send this email out far and wide.  This week we got close to 4,000 pounds!  
Lots of applesauce for the hungry being made by Manzana and will be delivered to Redwood Empire Food Bank thanks to you!
And…..Farm to Pantry is swamped with requests to pick apples in West County, but they are short on volunteers, especially during the heat and smoke.  PLEASE, if you can, contact   www.farmtopantry.org and click on the volunteer button.  The majority of apples we are using are being gleaned by them, but they can’t do it without more gleaners!
Paula Shatkin

🍏 Attention Backyard Apple Growers! 🍎

 

Attention backyard apple growers!

Based on what we now know about the SARS-CoV-2 virus (COVID-19), the majority of our Apple Core believe the risk to the health of our patrons and our volunteers is too great to operate our beloved Community Apple Press this season. We will continue to monitor the situation over the upcoming months, but because the health of our volunteers and patrons is our highest consideration, we think it is unlikely things will change.

That said, you may be wondering what you’re to do with all those apples ripening on your backyard trees. We would like to offer these options:

We can get together as a community to collectively have apples pressed at Apple-A-Day Ratzlaff Ranch, our hometown commercial apple pressing facility located on Occidental Road in Sebastopol.

Their minimum processing order is 1,600 pounds of apples. The juice you receive will not necessarily be from your own apples. For example, if you contribute 100 pounds of apples, you will receive 1/16th of the total juice. It costs about $3.00/gallon to press.

If you want to be part of this option please call Paula D. at (707) 829-3494 or email at hotpeppers@pon.net.
Let’s press together!

Donate apples to a local charity. 

In this time of great loss for so many: evictions, unemployment, school closures and the loss of breakfast and lunch for low income children, donating apples is a simple way to help.

How this works: You pick and deliver to a designated site (to be determined), or we will send a truck to pick them up. If you need help picking please let us know. We have groups of volunteers willing to pick larger quantities. Slow Food Russian River can provide a letter documenting your donation for the IRS if you need that.If you want to be part of this option please call Paula D. at (707) 829-3494 or email at hotpeppers@pon.net.
I’d like to donate my apples.

Get together with your friends and family
and rent a press to make your own juice.

Sebastopol Hardware and other local places may offer press rental.

Please let us know if you wish to be part of either of the options above as soon as possible – no later than August 1, 2020 – so Paula D. and the Apple Core can get the logistics organized.

–  The Apple Core & the Slow Food Russian River leaders