Cider

We have very, very old apple trees on our property that we've never done anything with. We were told it's not worth spraying and trimming them, they are too old. This year, the gal that lives in our basement advised us to get cider made from them. We've talked about that in the past but never did it. Her brother has an orchard and makes cider, so this was perfect. We got a huge ladder and got as many apples as we could off our 4 apple trees. Then we got to go watch them make cider. It was really neat. The boys were not thrilled about all the apple picking, but i kept telling them 'we're working for cider!' i think after they tasted the cider today they realized it was worth all the work! it was really good and neat to see how it's made:

The apples get put up top there...and get chopped up and pressed.


The juice trickles down into the long tray and goes through a filter, then gets sucked up into a huge tank. The final step. Putting the cider into containers and labeling them. The tank holds over 200 gallons of cider. We got 13 gallons from our apples.