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Comment by jakedata | Hacker News Reader

My father has a small orchard in Maine and he gifted me several trees including a clone of a "lost" variety called the "Canadian Strawberry".

https://fedcoseeds.com/trees/canadian-strawberry-apple-112

This tree is growing robustly alongside my numerous pawpaw trees and I look forward to getting some fruit in the next year or so. He makes cider every year from the apples he collects from all the feral trees in his area. It is always amazing to appreciate the difference in flavor from the different varieties he harvests.

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> He makes cider every year from the apples he collects from all the feral trees in his area.

Are pests problematic when making cider? Do you have to throw away anything that has a bug in it?

You can leave the fruits on the ground, But If you would not eat an apple, why would you drink it. Dont use fruit with pests in it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jRMK3dA2kI

You don't want to use the nasty ones for sure, but every plant product you eat probably has some insect protein in it already, so it is a judgement call.

The best thing to do with windfall apples is to turn them into pork.

Pork? Huh? Feed them to pigs?

Sure. If you keep pigs (and chickens) then there is essentially zero food waste.

This is how efficient farms have worked for centuries. Orchards full of fruit trees, with sheep grazing the grass underneath, bees pollinating the flowers, and pigs in the scrubland next door to feed the windfalls to. Maximising land use to its full potential, unlike the farming monocultures of today.

>Maximising land use to its full potential, unlike the farming monocultures of today.

"Maximising land use to its full potential" (whatever that means) =/= whatever is economically optimal (ie. factoring in inputs like labor)

We should be feeding pigs and chickens insects. They’re omnivores. It’s weird that we are trying to feed them entirely or mostly grain.

It's not weird; grain is cheap. Totally understandable.

They'd die, just like people. Mammals in general can't digest chitin. There aren't any human populations that consume a significant amount of insect protien. It's just a trick to demoralize and humiliate the peasantry.

Bugs literally aren't even fit to be fed to pigs. But I'd enjoy force feeding somebody like you more than you could handle!

Pretty sure pigs eat grubs the find when they root in the dirt.

Nah, they reject insect food. Have you ever been physically forced to eat bugs? We can change that!

You are a very strange person.

Are you a pig farmer? Because this has been studied many times and you’d think they’d notice.

This is one situation where I can say, “how can a billion Chinese people be wrong?” without sarcasm. Roasted grasshopper is sold as a snack. Whole grasshopper. People aren’t dying from it.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adc9165

https://www.wired.com/story/insects-pigs-poultry/ - EU approved insects for pigs and poultry in 2022 and I’m pretty sure there are farmers in Europe.

Ugh, disgusting. No more European cured pork products for me!

Codling moths are definitely going to be an issue. When they burrow around in the apple, they allow for rot and the varying amounts and types of mycotoxins.

Definitely not acceptable to drink.

Hard cider from Apple with some CM actually taste better than "clean" sprayed apples. I think the moth proteins might add something to the fermentation.

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