Apple Cider Pressing Party

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We are thankful to be getting some much needed rain.  Good rain, all night long.  It stopped today before noon and even though it was cool and damp, we still went to a Cider Pressing Party we had been invited to.  The first time we had been even though it has been an annual event for several years and quite a tradition.  The nice folks hosting the party spent lots of time decorating their yard with corn stalks, bales of hay and bushel baskets of beautiful red apples.

We are having an early foliage season this year and on the way to the party we sure enjoyed looking at the beautiful colors as we wound our way up the along the Black River before taking the old dirt roads leading to our friend's place.  

Besides all these lovely baskets of apples, the bed of a truck was heaped with more ripe, sweet ones.  These are the apples you don't get in the stores!  They are actually ready to eat NOW, not the really hard, half ripe ones from a super market.  So juicy and good and a real joy to eat.  Upon our arrival we could smell the BBQ fire and the table was beginning to groan with the load of casseroles and home baked beans, home made egg rolls, homemade pepper jelly to top the cream cheese and crackers while awaiting the cooking ribs.

Pressing was in progress and what a great bunch of pressers!  Everyone pitched in to help from the little ones to the honored elderly.  The youngest person attending was probably about 2 months old and the oldest, a sweet, very hard working lady who could cut up apples faster than anybody there, and who proudly told us she was 94 years old !  Her brother who was close to this in age, worked hard to keep the cut up apples pushed down into the grinder which was being turned by the youngsters taking turns at the wheel.  After the grinding comes the squeezing or pressing.  This job seemed to fall to the middle aged guys.  The fresh juice was then collected in stainless steel kettles and poured through cheesecloth into more kettles and taken to the huge cider barrel with the spigot at the bottom for drawing off the sweet cider.  Of course several people kept the cutters, grinders and squeezers all supplied with baskets full of apples to work with.  This included washing each basket full in a big tub before supplying the cutters with their work.  Quite a process and all went so smoothly and well. 

The apples get a good washing

Each apple gets quartered, Emma is by far the fastest apple cutter around!

Another bucket full and ready to squeeze

Must not forget the roasted corn on the cob!  Hostess Jackie has this under control.

After working and eating a great meal which always tastes extra good outside on a cool fall day, some of the kids had a good game of bad mitten while their elders enjoyed good conversation and fellowship.  It was a great party and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  As the guests prepare to leave,  each is offered a jug of this tasty sweet cider, the fruits of their labors, to take home to enjoy and to remember their fun day each time they have a glass.  Thanks Jackie and Mike for the great day !

Henry VanDyke's "God of the Open Air" (2nd paragraph of Stanza VI) seems to mirror my thoughts today.

"These are the things I prize

And hold of dearest worth:

Light of the sapphire skies,

Peace of the silent hills,

Shelter of forests, comfort of the grass;

Music of birds, murmur of little rills,

Shadow of clouds that swiftly pass,

And, after showers,

The smell of flowers

And of the good brown earth...

And best of all, along the way,

Friendship and mirth."

Autumn Again!

We are getting some much needed rain tonight!  Just hoping it will be a gentle rain lasting through the night.  Weatherman says we may have some high winds and even speak of tornado warnings until later this evening.  Pretty scary!

I picked the quince the other day and made some quince butter...not unlike apple butter but with a definite zing !   I also saved some juice to add to my 'Paradise Jelly' that I'll be making this week.  It is a great source of pectin.  The garden is about finished for the year.  I picked the last of the tomatoes the other day.  Have made sauce, juice, casseroles, and Tomato Spice Jam.  Have a couple green ones left for another meal of fried green tomatoes.  The beets did well although I didn't plant very many.  Cukes have given up and the zucchini too, finally. Last week cousin Natalie came down from Mt. Holly with a kettle full of 'grindings', the zucchini, onions and peppers needed for a batch of relish.  We put our kettles-full together and made up the final batch for the season. Our pole beans are just beginning!!  After thinking we had nothing but lovely leaves and huge vines, along come the blossoms and we have had about 3 pickings now.   I really wondered if they would make it to beans before the frosts came.

This week Den and I celebrate our 56th wedding anniversary.  I put together a hard cover 'Mac Book' for him on my computer and had it printed.  The title is "A Man Of Many Hats"  with a sub title, 'A pictorial biography of Mr. Fix-It'.  It came out really well and when it was delivered to the door the other day, I couldn't wait to give it to him to see if he liked it.  He was delighted !  Here's a picture of the cover collage.

Included are pictures of his hobbies, inventions, interests, some Fix-It Shop activities and around home doings.  As his son in-law says, he is truly a man of many hats, literally and figuratively!  Looking through the completed book, I counted 10 different hats!  It was a fun project.

Now I must start to focus on 'migration' time and all the things that need to be finished up here and need to be making lists of things I want to take along this year... like winter projects or little things I've set aside for the Fl. house.  It should be a very interesting trip this time as we plan to take our sweet little Miss Lizzie kitty along.  She is not fond of riding, at least not in her little 'go-to-the-vet cage!  We will be taking her for a few short rides that don't end up there just to get her used to the car.  NOT looking forward to the trip but it will be nice to have her with us all winter.  She wasn't a happy guest last winter with her former 'people'.  Our daughter in-law has another cat and a very active, playful little Boston Terrier and Lizzie wants to be with a family where she is the only pet.  She has us trained very well!  

Last week we went to the World's Fair in Tunbridge where we met friends and spent the afternoon and evening enjoying the sights and eating our fill of our favorite fair foods. Pretty healthy choices...fresh roasted corn on the cob, homemade apple crisp with ice cream, and spiral cut beets and sweet potatoes that were deep fried like french fries. Yum!  And then there were the not so healthy choices... the fried bread dough nuggets ( count me out for this one) and the 'everything burger' that was way more than I could eat!  We are always drawn to the sounds of the old pump organ in one of the display buildings where someone is playing good old hymns.  We just gather around, provide a choir and sing along to a few hymns before moving on...it's a tradition!  This year there was a magician performing under the big tent and I love to watch a magician in action!  My favorite act out of all his bag of tricks was the 'floating table'.  He had a boy of about eight years come up to help him, gave him a pair of goggles like Harry Potter would wear and then he proceeded to take hold of the linen tablecloth and as he lifted it, the whole little table rose from the ground and just floated around where ever he seemed to steer it with the tablecloth.  The boy kept a close eye on things and looked under the cloth to no avail, nobody knew how he did this amazing act.  

Then on to the exhibits.  So much talent here in the hills!  The art exhibit was great, the photography being the largest.  Floral displays, quilts and other sewing projects.  The young people's room was full of things the kids had made.  Lots of canned goods and baked goods to be judged.  The largest pumpkin this year was 675 lbs. (plus or minus a few as I can't remember numbers that well).  It seems like last year it was a 700-something pounder. In the gazebo musicians entertained with really good music.  Of course, the animals the 4H kids raised and cared for were all so clean and healthy looking.  They'd take turns leading the cows down to the river to give them a drink.  This truly is a wonderful country fair.  All this on a beautiful autumn day with pure blue skies and a gentle breeze, no humidity and about 75 degrees.  We drove up in the Gypsy Wagon so after the fair we spent the night up on Darling Hill and slept so, with full tummies and tired feet.  Natures alarm clock awakens us at around 5 something in the morning.... the hooting of the owls!  They were quite vociferous this morning! 

Enjoy these lovely fall days!

"What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God"  Micah 6:8

 

Ramblings

I'm needing to find more time to write in my blog!  Getting things done that need doing BUT missing my quieter times of the year.
I have a friend who seems to accomplish a lot and yet she manages to set aside time for herself.  She takes a 'personal retreat' now and again.  She just sent me an email upon returning from one of these special times she grants herself.  She sent along a picture of this luscious, mile high piece of chocolate pie she treated herself to at the P&H Truck Stop in Wells River on her way to a lake in the far northern regions of VT.  The next picture was of the empty plate!  Now that made me want to hop in the car and drive up there.  Of course I could go just a bit further and visit the grandson's family and cuddle the two little gr. granddaughters a bit.  That would be a great 'retreat' for this Grandma GG.

I picked what may be nearly the last of the garden yesterday and made a great vegetable soup to take to the senior luncheon at church today.  Still think I will have a good crop of pole beans if the frost doesn't get them first!  They are all blooming like crazy now and we have picked enough for a couple meals.  Thought for awhile we wouldn't have a single bean on the gorgeous tall vines.  I still have a few beets to harvest but I think the cukes and zukes are calling it quits.  Cousin Natalie is coming down on Thursday next to make some zucchini relish with me.  She will grind the veggies and set them overnight in a crock with some salt and tote it all down to rinse, cook and jar up with me in the morning.  She has scads of zucchini and I only have two left to harvest.

Remember Jack in the Bean Stalk?

Today we had company from Ohio.  Snowbird friends we spend the winter months with in Fl.  Nice visit with them.  They are enjoying their stay in VT and heading out to Maine for a few days before going back home.

Are you getting sick of all the emails and Face Book 'stuff' to do with politics?  So much mud slinging!  And who can believe anything we read or hear any more!  On Sunday, in his sermon, our Pastor spoke about Ghandi's 7 Dangers.  It seems like we are in a time where we are living with all of these dangers, magnified many times over.  Thought you might like to read Ghandi's list if you don't already know of the list, which I didn't.

Ghandi's 7 Dangers

1. Wealth without Work
2. Pleasure without Conscience
3. Knowledge without Character
4. Business without Ethics
5. Science without Humanity
6. Religion without Sacrifice
7. Politics without Principles

Something to think about for sure.

We had a little rain, for which we are thankful but it has been a few days and hot ones.  Our rivers are SO dry and we know of folks with springs for their water supplies who are finding them very low or with no water at all.  The river that usually flows over the dam just north of our house and which we can see from our back patio is only flowing over one corner of the dam now.  There is very little water above the dam and folks are using the river bottom for a beach!  Hearing voices out the back door, we look up river to see this strange sight.  I have never seen so little water in this river.  My camera zooms in to show how someone has painted, 'Live In Harmony' on the dam itself while the water is so low.

Tomorrow, Saturday, is Community Market day here on the Green.  I plan to go over and set up again.  It is such fun to visit with all who come by to shop, eat and listen to the music.  This week we will have a different group playing for us.  I have made some Tomato Spice Jam this week and still have zucchini relish to sell.  No donuts this week!  Too busy.  Have a few craft items left.  Thought you'd like this picture of my mode of transportation up the street to the Green.

To Market....To Market....to buy ??

My trusty 'driver' Alison comes by for me.

Another Quote.   When you feel like you are drowning in life,

                            Don't worry !  Your Life Guard walks on water !

            Be Blest.....Be a Blessing !