During one weekend in August every year, Lethbridge Alberta has chosen to have their  juicing festival. All the folks with apple trees bring their produce to the juicer and they make a party of it all.

Who would have thunk that Lethbridge, land of grain and wind, would have something as Okanagan-like as a juicing event? I wouldn’t have thought there would be that many apples there.

This was the discussion Nelly and I had which brought to mind what Wally and Auntie Kay did every fall. Wally had a wooden barrel, I would guess it to be a three or four gallon size.

He took it to the Sun Rype juice plant in Oliver and had them fill the barrel with juice from Winesap apples. Winesaps made the best tasting apple juice ever! One year we had juice from a different variety and it just didn’t compare to the taste Winesaps yielded.

Wally took the barrel home to Auntie Kay and she canned the juice. To my recollection, she put it into fruit canning jars, twelve to sixteen in all, and they were stored in the basement along with a number of jars of grape juice, which were processed in a similar manner. We grew the grapes.

Auntie Kay always strained the grape juice before canning it but some sediment accumulated at the bottom of the jars anyway.

The two juices were used during the winter. There were occasions especially during Christmas when we used copious amounts during dinners where twenty to thirty people would attend. Auntie Kay always reminded the juice mixing people about the dregs, for people didn’t seem to remember the problem from year to year.

As a boy, I ate half a dozen apples every day. We had Macs and Johnathans stored in the cool of the basement. They would last until December with Auntie Kay using them for pies and apple sauce too.

Wally always placed the limit of what he could put into cold storage at the packing house. Each grower had a small packing house space where he could store a limited amount of fruit.The apple of Wally’s choice for cold storage was Red Delicious. Sometime, during the third week of December, he went to the cold storage to get a box of apples, sometimes I went with him.

It was always so cold and fresh smelling in that storage facility. The attendant brought us our apples and helped us to the car.
We went home and as Wally opened the box in the house, we children waited with baited breath. As soon as the box was opened we grabbed one and bit into it. I might mention that washing the apple before eating it was unheard of. You might shine it on your shirt, but wash it, no.

The apples were always so crisp and juicy, with the juice running down our chins; so full of flavour one was not enough. We were limited to two apples a day and even at that rate of consumption the box did not last long.

Anyone familiar with eating apples knows that you don’t bite the apple piece off. You bite into the skin and a little into the flesh,  then break the rest of the bite off. I still eat an apple like that. I don’t eat as many as I used to for some digestive issues have arisen.

We never had orange juice for Wally always said the only difference between orange juice and apple juice was that the orange growers had a shrewder marketing scheme than the apple growers.

The only oranges that ever came into our house were from Japan; the Mandarins; in December; on my birthday. Wally was willing to support the Japanese Mandarin growers but not the American orange growers. To my knowledge the Americans were unwilling to import Japanese Mandarins, they were protecting their own orange growers.

I seldom drink apple juice or any juice for that matter. I would rather chew my fruit than drink it, I enjoy it more. My apologies to Wally, I eat more oranges than apples.

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