A fruit mill or scratter is an essential bit of kit for any Apple Day.  It’s the thing that turns your apples into a mash that you then put into your press to get the juice out.

Friends of Cambridge Apple Day (or regular visitors to this blog) will know that when we started four years ago, I adapted an old woodchipper to become our fruit mill.

To be fair, it’s done the job, not least thanks to the superhuman efforts of Ed S (handsome guy in the light coloured shirt above) who has taken charge of the feeding the apples in (and pushing them onto the spinning blades) for at least three years now.

The problem is that it is pretty slow – even with Ed’s heroic work – and if we’re honest it wouldn’t pass even a rudimentary health and safety audit.  Frankly, we’re worried for Ed.  It’s only a matter of time before he falls in and…

We want to make Cambridge Apple Day bigger, better and safer.  So this year we want to get a brand new purpose built Vigo fruit mill.

Beautiful isn’t it?  Designed specifically for apples.  Safe.  Quick.  Yellow.  What’s not to like? We’ve tried one out at the Shropshire Apple Day and it is as good as it looks.  With one of these we can produce more delicious juice and cider to give to all you lovely volunteers, street parties, school fetes and other great people.

We also want to loan our kit to other community groups, but we can’t even think about that until we’ve got a proper fruit mill that we know is safe.

We need help to raise the funds to buy this thing of beauty.  We need £795 and we have set ourselves 30 days to do it.  Those smart people at Just Giving have made it all easy with their new website Yimby.

All you need to do is log on here and you can make a donation through Just Giving’s super secure platform (you’ve probably used it to sponsor someone before).  Even a tiny donation would help us get to our target of £795.  If you’ve ever joined us for Apple Day or if you just like what we do (or you’re worried about Ed), please get involved.

Help us make Cambridge Apple Day bigger, better and safer.  Be awesome and we’ll give you some cider.

Phil