Twice last week I listened to myself sagely pronounce: ah, well, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. In both cases, parents were commenting with on something idiotic their kids had done. And they were wondering how their kids could have done or said or written whatever it was. And in both case, it was something I’d known both of them to do when they weren’t much older than their kids are now. I can’t remember the details – just the essence.

It’s a great expression – one that says so much. But literally? Apples and trees? How far is far? The garden is littered with fallen apples. And they’re not dropping vertically. They’re special apples. Gifted apples. They can fly.

The windfalls are not big enough to bother peeling for tarts. And they’re too bruised to be any good for cider. So what do to with hundreds and hundreds of the little buggers and not a pig within smelling distance when you need one?

I did what I usually do when presented with such a massive ‘What now!’ I googled. What to do with windfalls. I could make them into apple chips, had I a vegetable hydrator, but I don’t. And it’s way too hot to even think about getting in the car and shlepping to the nearest big town to go search for one. I could make chutney – but I don’t have all the ingredients I need and, as I said, it’s way too hot ….

One of the things about living in a shop-less village is that you learn to make do with what you have. Add a modicum of heat-induced laziness to the mix and it was definitely a case of digging deeper.

Cloudy apple juice. There ya go. Perfect. All I needed were apples (plenty), a strainer, a few clean cotton cloths, and some empty bottles.

I mentioned that it’s hot, yeah? Not an ideal day to be standing over a gas stove boiling up kilos of apples but what conscience I have wouldn’t let me sit and watch them rot. So that’s what I did today – I boiled apples.

It amuses me no end how quickly we fall into the patterns of our parents. Somehow, the outside seems to have become himself’s domain, while the inside is mine to rule. [That said, it could be that himself loves the sun and I don’t.] Anyway, he picked and I cooked. And it’s been hours. I’ve been at this since 11 this morning and there’s still no end in sight. I’ve run out of bottles so I’m multitasking and finishing off last night’s wine as I go, while looking for another with a screw-top lid to lay into.

My cloudy apple juice isn’t nearly as pink as the one in the recipe picture, but then my apples weren’t nearly as red. It’s nice though – a little sweet, but I have it on good authority that it’s a great source of fibre. And I saved some of the pulped apple for use in apple sauce or a sponge mix. Martha Stewart, each your heart out.

Penny per minute, it certainly didn’t pay me to spend the bones of my day making apple juice. The return on my time investment isn’t great. About a litre an hour. Were I to sit down and do the math, I probably spent more on gas to boil the buggers than I would have spent to buy the equivalent in juice. But I know that my juice has no additives (I took out all the worms). And it’s fresh. And it’s mine.

The nature of my day job is such that I rarely get to see a finished product. Sure, I get emails from workshop participants months after the event telling me that they’ve been asked to present somewhere and now have the confidence to do so. Or they tell me how much better their work lives are, now that they’re not petrified of speaking out. One of my TED speakers has had over a million hits on a video of a speech we worked on together. But those concrete, measurable results are rare.

Today though, I can see what five hours of work has yielded. And while the work itself was mindless, it gave me time to switch off and not think. It gave me a sense of satisfaction that is all too rare in my world. And for that I’m truly grateful.