In the springtime you love your fragrant, blossoming apple tree, and give little thought to the fall fruit, be it tiny, tart Siberian crabapples or larger and sweeter Norkent apples. But the apples will come, regardless of your schedule or ability to process them all.
So you bake some pies, and you drop off bags of apples with friends who welcome them with varying levels of enthusiasm. But it’s hard to keep up, and your backyard fruit deserves better treatment than being raked up and unceremoniously dumped into the green bin.
Enter Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton, an organization dedicated to teaching Edmontonians how to use and preserve local food. It offers workshops from canning and fermentation to caring for fruit-bearing trees and shrubs.
Fall may be this volunteer group’s favourite time of year. Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton invites Edmontonians to bring a bag of apples to the cider celebration events and help make soft cider. There is a pedal-powered apple press on site, and jugs of cider to enjoy.
The first of three events this fall produced 500 litres of juice. The next cider pressing event is at Sakaw Gardens on Saturday, Sept. 19. If you cannot make it to that event, there will be a final apple press date and cider celebration on Oct. 3 at a location to be determined.
Each year Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton presses more than 3,000 kg of apples at the annual cider celebration series.
But more than that, the group offers to come and pick the fruit that you just can’t keep up with, and take it away for processing. Outside of cider season, it offers instructional opportunities that teach people how to care for their urban fruit trees, how to preserve the bounty, and in July 2027, is offering a course in permaculture certification to learn low-maintenance, locally sustainable food and other gardening methods.
Apple Cider Celebration
Sakaw | 5820 11A Ave NW, Edmonton | September 19, 2026, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. | operationfruitrescue.org
If you can’t make it to Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton’s cider celebration but you want to make sure you don’t waste your apples, consider trying your hand at making some boiled cider at home, without a press. You can make this using cut up apples, or just using the peels and cores left over after you have made a pie or apple crisp.
Though Operation Fruit Rescue Edmonton can teach you how to preserve shelf-stable apple cider, this quick recipe is not shelf stable. It’s meant to be refrigerated and enjoyed inside two weeks.
Makes about 6 cups of soft cider. You can enjoy this soft cider cold or warmed up, adding a little rum to your mug if you like.
