Cider Making

If there are any followers of my Blog out there, I appreciate you and apologize for no new entries this past week.  I have had computer problems and am just now up and running.  If this wasn't bad enough I'm now in the process of having to learn new ways of doing things.  We'll see how this goes.

One pretty afternoon last week, some of the members of our Historical Society had a fun afternoon of making cider, preserving an old heritage craft we called it.  Days before apples had been gathered and stored for the day.

The cider mill belonged to Jim Carter and he let us borrow it for the afternoon.   In the picture at the right is Sarah Ford, Pat Carter, on the left, and Brennan Cruce at the mill.  Brennan is turning the crank to squeeze the juice from the apples.  All are members of the board.

The apples are first put through a grinder at the opposite end of the mill, they get ground up and fall into the bucket you see in the picture.  The crank is then turned to mash down a round board on top of the apples and the pure apple juice flows into the container under the mill.  

                                                                                       

Here Barry Gilbert gets ready to turn the crank as Brennan Cruce waits his turn.  The fresh apple juice was delicious, the first I had ever tasted. 

It was a fun afternoon for us, and lasted only a couple of hours.  I am sure for the pioneer's of yesteryear it was a hard day's work for them, gathering the apples, getting them ready for the mill, and then turning and cranking it for hours to get several gallons of juice.