We were so grateful to be invited back for our friend's family's apple weekend. This was our fourth year helping press cider! We are lucky that each year things have lined up with work schedules and weather to allow us to participate. Not sure if we will be able to next year, but if things do work out we will definitely be happy to help. It's amazing how much food even a piece of land that size can produce. We thought it was a good apple year last year, but this year was crazy! We ended up with 87 gallons and I think that was a new record. Here are the links to my past blogs and the amount of cider we pressed:
2014 - 50 gallons
2013 - 23 gallons
2012 - 11 gallons
There were still so many apples left on the trees after our full day of pressing. We brought home quite the bag of picked apples and I have had fun trying to get stuff made as to not waste any! But I'll post about that at the end of this.
Here are pictures from the weekend. Like last year, we drove down on a Friday arriving after dark. Visited for a little bit and let the kids wind down before bed. The girls did pretty good, actually they did really great in comparison to the last time we were away from home on our Missouri trip! YAH! Night sleep has finally taken a turn for the better.
Saturday we got up and had a wonderful breakfast and were all eager to get started picking apples. We made a stop at the "park" as Isaac called it (the swing-set).
Emma being cute and clingy
Mary giving one of her Mary faces
Let the picking begin!
And the eating (whoa the apple poops that weekend)
The girls got to roam for a little bit and then it was easier just to wear them so we could get some real help done.
Isaac was a big help this year, pretty independent and running all about.
Look at all those apples in the trees!
Mary being cute
After we had filled all the containers we had to fill
It was time to hop in the pool! One thing different about this year was that it was SO HOT! I remember it being rather cool and the start of fall weather in previous years. Not this year, we were all sweaty and sticky from the humidity. The pool was perfect!
We thought we had forgot to pack Kyle's swim trunks... but it turned out we had his and didn't have Isaac's So it was a weekend of swimming in his underwear :-P
Mary wasn't quite of a fan of the water as she normally is. Giving her pouty duck face.
After a swim break and lunch it was time to get pressing some cider! There was a little hiccup with the cider press motor, but the guys got it all figured out and up and running.
Fun with my macro lens:
The girls took a good nap. Mary typical length, but Emma slept for a whopping 3 hours!
Mary had some fun in the wagon while Emma was still downstairs sleeping. She did not want to get out.
There she is, she's AWAKE!
And back to eating apples :-P
So much cider
Working so long it was almost dark (we did stop for dinner at some point, I think this was after dinner)
We had a lovely chat around the fire after everyone got their kiddos to bed. The girls slept good again and the next morning we had breakfast, another swim in the pool, and picked some more apples to take home. And of course the girls ate some more apples
We had an amazing Chicken Curry lunch before getting on the road for home. Monday I attempted to tackle our bag of apples by making two apple pies while Kyle was home to man the troops.
I quickly decided pies were going to be hard as two barely made a dent in our apple stash. Tuesday I decided to try my hand at Apple Butter and found a crock pot recipe which was perfect because it was more of a hands off way of getting through the apples. Just what I needed when chasing three littles.
I also tried my hand at inversion canning. They seemed to have sealed so I did another batch on Wednesday after a taste test of course. MMMMmmmm it was GOOD! Isaac and the girls love it too!
