Day62 - Hanover Cannery - Wright's Chapel cans Applesauce

Today I was invited to visit the Hanover cannery while Wright's Chapel canned applesauce.  It was a great experience.  I was so excited to see the inside of the cannery a second time.  I was even more excited to see everything in action.  It is one thing to know about the process in general and another to see it truly working and going on.  It was also eye opening to see how many people, and how labor intensive parts of the process could be.

A pickup truck full of apples arrived at the cannery at 8am.  The apples were loaded into large buckets and brought in.


First all the apples have to be washed.   The wash bins were filled with water and the apples dropped in.  They were then put into rectangular pans and moved to tables.



At the tables the apples were cut into quarters. Any brown spots were cut off as well.  The apples were finished being quartered just before 12 noon.

Once quartered they are placed into trays to be dumped into the kettles to cook until they get soft.



Bob, retired pastor, and I figured out a faster way to process the apples.  He would quarter them, and I would sort through and cut off the bad spots.  We were able to make light work of the apples, once we had our system down.


The lids of the cans had to be labeled.  These ladies were, in their best printing, labeled the lids with two different sets of information.  The information indicated date, product, and which retort it was processed in.

On the other side of the shop, folks were filling the rinsed cans with piping hot applesauce.  The apples had been processed through a really neat machine that separated the apple pulp from the seeds, skins, and all the other things no one wants in applesauce.


These ladies were dynamite at filling the cans.  Once full, the cans were put into the Line Exhaust system.  This machine heats the product (applesauce in this case) and the can to the correct temp for sealing the can.


The cans come out HOT at the other end, lids are put on them and then they are sealed.  Once sealed,  the cans are put into a HUGE metal basket, in neat circles (14 outer ring, 8 middle ring and 1 in center) and 5 layers high.

Once the basket is full,  it is transferred to the Retort for 15 minutes where it is cooked, and the excess air is removed through very high temperatures.


Over all it was AMAZING experience.  There were 20 people there, and it was likely to take from 8 am until 5 pm to finish everything.

Seeing this today really helped me to understand what it will take to process our food once it comes out of the gardens.  I am very excited that Carol and the Hanover Cannery are willing to help us in our long term project.

Another great day!