Musteri Madness, and Apples Aplenty

Long before my current WWOOFing site, Rosenhill, had volunteers, before they had Saturday night parties every weekend, before they had a cafe even, there was the Musteri.  The Musteri seems to be the be-all and end-all of the Rosenhill entity.  It is the sacred shrine, the Holy of Holies, the bustling commecial center of the empire.  It doesn't neccessarily bring in the most money out of all the Rosenhill enterprises, but it demands the most attention, recieves the most love, and uses the most WWOOFer manpower.

"Must" is the Swedish word for "pressed juice," and the Musteri is a great machine that turns, apples, pears, berries, and more into juice through a grinder and press that looks like a machine The Once-ler would use to make Thneeds in Dr. Suess's "The Lorax."  Originally, when Lars and Emilia, the owners of this place, first bought the farm from Emilia's parents, it was just a farm, an orchard, and a giant, loud, clunky apple press.  People would come from miles around to pick apples, or more often bring their own, since it seems that every house outside of Stockholm has a few apple trees.  They would bring the apples to be pressed, but eventually the lines grew too long, so Lars and Emilia opened a cafe for people to wait, drink, eat, and spend money while waiting for their turn at the Musteri.  Over time, the cafe has become an entity of its own, and as we who work hours and hours in the dishroom and kitchen can attest, there is plenty of draw there as well.  But from the time the Musteri opens in early September to when the last of the apples have turned too rotten at the end of October, there are lines hours long and the crunching and roaring sounds of the apple grinder can be heard steadily for 7 hours a day.

It is also, on a busy day, as chaotic a workplace as you can imagine.  The process of pressing apples in a perfect world would go like this: 1) Customer's apples are dropped into a bathtub to be washed and cleaned of big leaves, snails, rotten apples, and the like; 2) Customer's apples are dropped, one basket at a time, into the apple grinder, where the apples are chewed, scraped, crushed, and bludgeoned into pulp; 3) Said pulp is sprayed through a funnel into a large cheesecloth, where another worker folds, straightens, and piles the stacks of cloth on top of each other; 4) The tray holding the pile under the grinder is spun around to the other side of the machine, where a hydraulic is turned on and the tray is squeezed, pressing out all the juice into a bucket, while a second tray is loaded with the next customer's apples on the other side of the machine; 5) The juice is pumped from the bucket to the bottles, the bottles are sealed, the reciept is written, money is collected, and a happy and hopefully thirsty customer is sent on their way.

Now since this is not a perfect world and the Musteri is mainly operated by minimally trained volunteers, plus Lars and Bo, our Musteri-guru in residence, here are the kinds of issues we usually have to deal with: 1) Sometimes, the customer has about three pounds of apples, enough to make maybe 5 liters of juice, which frankly, is just a big waste of time for us on a busy day.  Other times, the customer has an obscene amount of apples, like the 285 liter load we spent 40 minutes on the other day, while other customers watched and waited, politely feigning patience.  Even with an average amount, say 25-75 liters, there are some customers who come in bragging about how they have the most beautiful apples all from one tree, which they picked last week, and now we open these garbage bags full of apples and have to spend 5 minutes picking out all the ones that have turned black and moldy since their were first bagged a week ago.

2)  Apples come in all different sizes and consistencies, so some of them clog up the grinder, some of them blast soft juicy pulp in every direction, like Steve Buscemi being stuffed into a woodchipper in "Fargo," and sometimes, the spinning blades decide they can't chop up the apples and instead, launch them like cannonballs into the air often nearly shattering windows or nailing bystanders in the noggin.  3) Proper folding is perhaps one of the most important things to get right in the musting process.  If you fold the cloths poorly, they will pop open while the apples are being pressed, and streams of thick apple pulp will erupt out like Old Faithful.  This is also one of my favorite mistakes people make, because lets face it, it's hilarious to see your friends get a juicy, brown spurt of applesauce right into their unsuspecting faces.

4) As often seems to happen to me, the job that is one of the easiest to screw up is also the one that Bo has chosen as the best one for me - filling the bottles.  We use a powerful pump, so when you turn it on, you better have the end of the hose in the bottle you want to fill, or once again, apple-stuff everywhere.  If you turn it off too early, the bottle isn't full enough and the customers feel ripped off.  Too late, and, you guessed it, juice everywhere.  Or, if the bottle is too small, like less than a liter, or if the opening won't allow the hose inside, you need to time and aim your pumping perfectly, or, thaẗ́'s right again folks, apple juice everywhere.

But all these hazards and potential mishaps are part of the fun of working in the Musteri.  We have fun rushing around working the machine, singing and dancing to Balkan opera, James Brown, or whatever other random music has been chosen to blast at full volume so that it can be heard over the roaring machinery.  There's a sense of pride that comes with coming off a 2-hour Musteri work shift with juice dripping down your arms, and chunks of apple pulp all over your face and hair, and wherever your clothes weren't covered in the orange plastic overalls we wear.  And the customers get one hell of a show out of the whole spectacle.   This past Saturday night, a huge party was thrown here, organized by a collective of artists who wanted to showcase their installations.  At around 11 pm, a bunch of us WWOOFers got bored of the party, so we all got some beers, went into the orchards to pick apples, turned on a disco light and trance music in the Musteri, and had ourselves a midnight musting party.  Afterwards, we suggested to Lars, with semi-seriousness, that we close the Musteri during the day, and from now on, only work mildly intoxicated and at night.  Lars told us, with semi-seriousness, that he would consider it.