My wife and I (city kids) left the hustle and bustle of the big city a few years ago and moved to the little town of Sodaville just outside of Lebanon.

We were able to purchase a new house on five acres and we are determined to be eco-friendly and appear as green as possible without being accused of having some tropical disease. To this end I was able to purchase a 75-year-old cider press for $20. It required a complete rebuild in my newly acquired 30- by 40- foot shop for the express purpose of processing two huge trees covered with apples.

Never one to leave well enough alone, and fancying myself a technocrat, I decided to switch the cider press from hand-operated to motor driven, an endeavor I later found to be fraught with peril. After purchasing an electric motor from a second-hand shop on Highway 20 and various other bits and pieces, I did the restoration/conversion.

I finished the apple/cider press/shredder so my wife buzzed up the hill on her little personal ATV - I followed, trudging along on foot, as I am not allowed to get near her ATV - and we picked a 5 gallon bucket full of apples and took them back to the shop. I filled the crusher and like an idiot I just put a bucket under where the debris should come out while it was IN the shop rather than taking it outside.

I tried to calculate the resultant r.p.m. of the crusher pulley (about 2 -1/2 feet in diameter) when driven from a 3-inch pulley attached to a 1750 r.p.m. electric motor. Clearly I did the calculation in furlongs rather than feet and inches because when I hit the switch the thing wound up with a terrifying noise and spat all the mangled apples into the bucket (with the possible exception of those stuck to the ceiling) and all of the juice went onto the floor of the shop. After some consultation with my wife as she was drying her feet from all the apple juice, we were forced to admit the construct did not meet design expectations.

Using my remarkable powers of observation, I saw that I had very stupidly mounted the delivery chute in a way that very cleverly separated the apples from the juice as described above. My wife, who is the heart and soul of patience, did tease me unmercifully for flunking Apple Press 101. In my own defense I reminded her my subscription of "Scientific American" did not help in such endeavors.

I fixed the problem, and the system works quite well if one can stand the noise. The only downside is we have not seen the neighbor's cat that was hanging around just before we cranked up the press. We have chosen to avoid the subject of the missing cat for political as well as health reasons.

So we do love where we live, though it is apparent "Farm Life" does require practice and a lot of Band-Aids.

Ken Barton is a retired engineer. He worked in the field of astronomy for Canada France Hawaii Telescope on the volcano, Mauna Kea, on the big island of Hawaii. He and his wife, Linda, are now adjusting to farm life in the Sodaville area.