Making Cider

We have this beautiful apple tree in front of our house.  Every year it yields beautiful apple blossoms and a ton of apples that attract the deer to our yard(feeding the deer is not a positive aspect; they eat my plants).  A few weeks ago, one of the women in our church who is a homesteader pointed out that, while the apples on our tree are not pretty, they are in fact edible and would make great cider.  This Sunday, she dropped a really big hint and pointed out that their cider press is up and running, and we really should take advantage of it.  So as the rain cleared this afternoon, the family headed out to our little tree, thinking we might fill a bucket of apples and take it over to their house. 

 We filled far more then one bucket and that is not including all of the drops that went to the compost pile because the chipmunks and worms had gotten to them.

 With our freshly picked apples loaded into the back of the car, mother and son headed to the cider press (Daddy stayed behind to make apple bread from the apples he set aside from the tree).  Before leaving, we had washed all of the apples in the tub and upon arrival we found that we should have waited since there was a nice washing station set up right next to the press.  Oh well, live and learn.  Little Man quickly started to grind the apples into the bucket; a task he was quickly distracted from by the swing set behind him. 

 Once mommy had enough chopped up apples in the bucket and ready to go, Little Man suddenly sparked interest in the task at hand again as the cider was pressed out of the bucket and poured into the jar below.  Of course, his true motives quickly surfaced as he asked for a drink of the freshly pressed cider.  Once thoroughly satisfied, he went back to exploring the play structure,while Mommy pressed well over two gallons of cider into jars (I actually left a trash bag full of apples for the family who's press we were using, because I could not fathom what I would do with all the freshly pressed cider). 

Upon our arrival back at home, we warmed some cider up and sipped on mugs of hot apple cider while staring out the window at the tree it had come from.  Daddy, on the other hand, was carefully investigating the pictures as he planned out how he would build a cider press for the back yard now that we know the beautiful tree out front can be used for more than its pretty flowers and deer food.