the harvest

this past saturday i had my first experience with pressing apples.  i had asked a friend of ours, Todd,  if we could use his cider press, having never done this before or knowing what was all involved,  he graciously brought it over.  to my surprise it filled up the back of his pick up truck, for some reason i thought a cider press would be much smaller.
luckily we were able to find apples yet, since it is at the end of the season for them.  for cider you don't have to get the pretty apples, you can get the 2nd and even 3rds(which i never knew there was such a thing.) i guess cider tastes better if you use a variety of different apples, it has a more complex flavor.

luckily Todd and his wife decided to do apples too, and came over and set everything up.  the whole apples go into the hopper which is run by a small motor that chops up the apples and comes out the bottom into a bucket.  the apples are then put into the wood press( Fischer is looking into it) and then the cider is pressed out manually. 

here's Todd and Jimmy manually pressing the cider out, which was quite a workout.

and watch that yummy cider pour out!   what a delicious treat to put your glass right under there and catch some fresh cider!


we strained the cider into a large garbage can (clean of course) and then poured it into the metal container which we could use to fill the bottles.   we had neighbors coming and going during all of this, some just to see what was going on, others to help out a bit. 

todd and his wife made 10 gallons, and we made 22 gallons.  a  neighbor of ours  helped out during much of this so we gave him some cider, we had a new neighbor move in next door, so she also got some, my parents went home that night with some in their cooler, and any lucky friend who happened to stop by that evening got fresh cider!  the rest we froze.  the whole experience was very enjoyable and all that cider was well worth the effort.
in between pressing cider, we made it to the first annual Harvest Celebration.  it felt very right to be celebrating natures harvest just as we were harvesting all those apples.  the Harvest Celebration began with a parade that had hand made puppets and were all human powered.  later that evening there was a cabaret show which included a fire circus which was a hit for people of all ages.  what a celebration on a beautiful day. 




the goddess of the harvest and the man on the moon!





















 these are a few of the reasons why i'm so happy to be living where i do, i feel very fortunate!