Cider

A week ago, Mary, Simone and I went over to a friend's house to help her pick her apples. They've got a lot going on, so we thought we'd come and harvest their apples for them. The tree in the front has small Liberty apples (and is a small tree). The apples were very tasty. Here are Mary and Simone after our harvest.

We picked all those apples in a mere 30 minutes. Picking apples is much easier than picking strawberries or raspberries.

This weekend we went over to another friend's place. They live on a farm and have several huge apple trees - and far too many apples to know what to do. So we went over after church and took some off their hands.

Their trees are real tall, and we were able to pick a bucket full just standing on the ground, or using a small step ladder. Frank asked if we wanted more, and when we said, "sure" he pulled out the fork lift.

That is a picture of the fork lift from my vantage point. I was standing about 15 feet in the air - on top of half a dozen pallets being held up by this fork lift. I could reach the tallest apples from there with ease. In no time I'd picked another 3 buckets full of King apples.

And to think I thought the 30 minutes was productive the weekend before. We picked 4 times as many apples in just over 45 minutes.

So, what do you do with that many apples? Well, we're gonna make some apple sauce, and we'll dry some apple slices. But, if you really want to concentrate apples, you make apple cider.

Back to the first friend's house - because they have a cider press (and all those apples we'd picked the week prior). Without hardly trying, we pressed 5 gallons of cider - with apples left over.

Here's a picture of one of the daughters of our friends, Nicole, and the cider press: