Kadee unloading the first truckload.

This is our 20 year old “farmer” unloading the heap of apples, pail by pail, and transporting them to the cider press in the garage (just a few feet away).  This is a girl who was born to be a farmer!  She hopes, someday, to have her own organic farm with fruits, vegetables, chickens (for eggs), and goats (for milk and cheese).

Kadee pours a pail of apples into the grinder.

The grinder is the first step.  It crushes the apples so that the pressing is more effective.  The process is very labor intensive.  The only automated part is the crushing.  After the apples are poured in here, you hit a switch and the gears grind and crush the apples, and deposit them into the wooden pail below the hopper.

Screwing down the press.

Once the apples are crushed the wooden barrel is pushed over to the pressing area.  Someone screws down the press and squeezes the juice out.  It flows along a wooden chute, through a filter, and into a pail … ready for bottling.

Grandpa Larry at the bottling station.

Even though we pressed more than 1000 pounds of apples that day, it looks like grandpa’s orchard is STILL full of apples.  I guess there are some pies in our future!

Here is an example of the copious quantities of beautiful apples still growing in the orchard.

After all the hard work we had a lovely lunch prepared by Grandma Bess.

And finally we took family photos in the orchard ... you may see this in a holiday card!