Huge apple harvest drives juice entrepreneur to 100-hour weeks

A strong apple harvest has kept juice entrepreneur Salla Tikkanen working up to 100 hours a week for months at her juice-pressing business in Hyvinkää, Yle reports. She says she has not seen a harvest like it in her 12 years in business.

Tikkanen has worked seven days a week, from 8am until late in the evening. The pace slowed to about half this week, and she plans to close for the season after next week.

Home gardeners in the area have brought their apples to be pressed. Each customer has supplied an average of 60 to 100 kilograms, and the total volume has reached tens of thousands of kilograms. Pears have made up about five per cent of the fruit.

About 30 kilograms of apples yield around 15 litres of juice. Tikkanen pasteurises it and seals it in airtight bags with taps, where it can remain drinkable for a year or longer.

The executive director of the Finnish Association of Fruit and Berry Growers, Heidi Wirtanen, said it was too early to call this a record apple harvest, as final figures are not yet available. But she described the season for apples and pears as strong, helped by a successful flowering, sufficient rain and the absence of severe winter damage and extreme heat.

Tikkanen expects next year’s apple harvest to be poor, at around one tenth of this year’s, and says the next good crop is likely in two years. She plans to take a holiday in southern India after the season and return to garden work in March or April, pruning apple trees.

Among berries, the strawberry harvest was slightly below the normal level of 14 million kilograms, while raspberries had a good year. Blackcurrants had a poor season after winter damage, spring frost, weak flowering and pest problems. Red and white currants fared better.