Making Apple Cider

On Sunday we went to a Peter's mentor's house/orchard to make apple cider. We all had a fun, but the boys had the most fun. They got to help in the making of the cider. Paul Yorty and his wife Lois have been making apple cider for years and have refined the process to make it safe for kids to help.


Here's the general idea.

You throw washed, brown spots removed apples into the grinder. Notice the grinder has that nifty, homemade hand-not-getting-ground protector. You can see the ground apples down below.


And then you smile at each other because everybody still has their hands and you are making yummy apple cider.

Next you spin the press that squeezes the ground up apples into yummy apple cider. I forgot to get a picture of it, but see the orange bucket at the edge of the fore ground. While the apples are getting pressed, you put the bucket on the ground under the press and the cider just comes flowing out.

Paul and Lois have a large orchard and sell their apples, gourds, pears and grapes. Samuel had fun looking at all the different kinds of fruit they had in available.

Of course they sell what boys don't eat. I think each boy had four or five pears.

Here is a corner of their orchard. Do you see the red thing? That's a swing. They planted all the trees along the side when they moved there 30 years ago. Isn't it just beautiful? It makes me want to live in the country kind of. They live down the road from a dairy, not the smell I want in the morning. Oh, and the diaries around here aren't small dairies. Big, 3,000 cow diaries.

Here's the horse next door. I couldn't get much closer without incuring too much sun so I kept taking pictures of it's rear. It's looking at me thinking I'm some crazy horse-rear loving person.

We made three and a half gallons just from one pressing. We been invited every year so far. If we are invited again I will get better pictures. Including, his homemade pushing the apples down device.