Happy Friday!
It’s the weekend again, and I still have stuff to share from LAST weekend!
Not only did we make cards last weekend, but we also made apple cider!! We went straight from my Shoebox Swap to my brother and sister-in-law’s house.
They have a farm with some land and animals, and they like to encourage families working and playing together. This is the second(?) year they’ve invited family and friends to come for a day of cider pressing. They get a huge crate of apples and sort them into quantities that would make a gallon of cider. And they have a crusher and 2 presses for the process. It was extra fun, because we ended up being there the same time my sister and nieces were there.
They also had a scavenger hunt and hayride through the farm for whoever was interested.
NOTE: I had told a few of my customers we were going to do this, and remembered I wanted to take pics. I didn’t realize at first my sister was doing video, too. I’m posting in order of the process, but some of the speaking might be “out of order”, cuz we did the process 2 different times. (They limit the number of gallons to 2, for time sake and so everyone can take part. But we were there at a lull, and they said we could make a third. Yay!) Faith is the niece you see in some of the videos, even though she was trying to stay out of it.
Crushing:
Oxidizing:
Once the apples are crushed, they need 20-30 min to oxidize to get out as much juice as possible. They usually bring them inside for more warmth, so they do it more quickly and/or completely.
Pressing:
The crushed apples are dumped into a cheesecloth type bag that lines the press.
Even though you already saw the process in the above video, I still added this short one cuz it was from doing our first 2 gallons at once.
Collecting:
We paid for the cider and were told to bring our own containers. They let us borrow jars for our 3rd gallon.
More bees:
This is just an additional video I took to see ALL the bees!! They were front and center for the pressing and collecting process! The bucket in the background of this one and the first pressing one were of the apple remains; Jeff & Dawn will use them for their animals or composting.
It was funny…the family before us were collecting their cider and obviously bees were around. One of the girls screamed, and the mom said, “ok so are you gonna freak out?” [thinking, “or are we gonna get this done?”] The girl’s answer was, yes! Haha!
We’re almost through our first gallon of cider, and we have 2 more in the freezer. It’s amazing! And Todd got to play volleyball with my sister Danielle and all 4 nieces there–Hayden, Morgan, Faith & Joy. It was a fun, full day!
Have a wonderful weekend!
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