Cider Making

Cider making is one of my favorite activities! It's right up there with blueberry picking... I just love being out in nature, enjoying fruit in season I guess! :)

Friends of ours so graciously allowed us to borrow their press again this year and we made a lot of cider to put in the freezer.

We started out picking apples as a family, but due to a couple of bee stings this summer the kids have been a little leery of bees. Unfortunately the bees were all around the ground on the fallen fruit, and they definitely loved hovering near the cider press! So the kids asked if they could play with Legos instead. ;) What started out as a fun family activity turned into a fun "Joshany" activity. But we were fine with that, we had a great time picking and pressing apples together for hours, and I loved every minute of it!

There was a bumper crop of apples in the orchard this year.

Once our cart was full we'd wheel the apples over to wash and chop them, with the big "chopper machine". ;) Then the chopped up apple pieces go into the press! Because the bees loved the fresh juice so much we ended up having to keep a strainer over our jugs, to keep the bees out!

We listened to all of our pandora stations on shuffle and had such a great time swaying to the music as we filled each jug! We even threw in a large batch of beautiful grapes from the vines to make grape-apple cider, too. Yum-my!!