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."