Meanwhile, in another place.. March 13, 2006
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Communities of Practice, cider, Wiki , trackbackWhile my focus has been on the exhibition and barn raising for DARnet, there have been some important developments over at ukcider.
Quietly on Saturday, the wiki cider pub guide count passsed the 600 mark. This represents a quantitative move beyond the scope that any printed guide has managed to achieve, as well as being more accurate and up to date of course, having the advantage of an immediate, numerous and knowlegable online editorship.
And down in Dorset, Rose Grant whose cidermaking year is published as a kind of journal within the wiki, has been thinking hard about fitting out her own very real and non metaphorical barn which houses the cidermaking operations. The engineering problem is to raise a large number of apples from ground level to the roof in a continuous process to feed the apple mill, from which the pomace can then be dropped down into the racks to form the cheeses for the press.
Rose is considering building a single elavator which raises the apples above the level of the roof, and then dropping them down through a large diameter pipe set at 90 degress. But some testing is needed to find out how well this would work and there lies a problem in that by the time that there are enough apples around to set up an apple rolling trial, it will be too late to design and build the elevator ready for the pressing season.
This is where a community of practice such as ukcider really shows how valuable it can be to members, as Rose well understands from having learned enough about the science and craft of cidermaking to develop from hobbyist to small scale professional, through tapping the expertise and support which exists in the community.
The wise move is simply to explain the situation and ask the question, then parts of the problem begin to be solved.
I came up with this:
“There aren’t any apples around right now. But you can’t afford to wait for apple season in order to obtain the information you need to design the elevator.
Supposing somebody with access to a sack or two of apples in
the southern hemisphere reading this might have plenty
of apples available either now or in the next few months? It must be
late summer there now already. Maybe Rose could explain exactly what
is needed, work out how they should conduct the trials and take notes,
and they might even record a video of the apples rolling down the pipe
so the effect can be seen. The outcome from this little piece of
international cooperation might be sufficiently valid for the
elevator to be designed with a reasonable confidence that the gravity
feed is going work.”
Within a few hours on the mailing list, an offer came in from Trevor and Frances.
“Yes the southern hemisphere apples are maturing nicely. Here in New Zealand I have collected in the earlys a couple of weeks ago and Kingston Black last weekend, just a few lates inc Royal Wilding to go. I would be pleased to help with experimenting if Rose, you can sketch out your plans.”
And now detailed instructions are being transmitted around the globe.
It will be fascinating to follow how the remote experiment helps, or if Rose decides to solve the problem based on some of the other suggestions which members have posted. Somebody suggested using an open trough instead of a pipe, but the snag with that idea has been pointed out:
“I want to use a pipe rather than a chute as this would also send water pouring into the roof when it rains.”
One thing is for sure, with such remarkable determination no obstacle will stand in the way of this particular cider barn being up and running ready for this year’s increased production.
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