Apples to Apples

Saturday, November 1st was a fun day for the 3 Sinclairs. Scott was reunited with his extended family, Jacob got to meet some cousins for the first time, and Nikki got to take part in the restart of what was once a Stauffer biennial tradition. Grandmas & grandpas, great aunts & uncles, and cousins galore all gathered together at Scott's Aunt Lois's farm in Allison for an old fashioned cider pressing.

For the few of you reading this who have not yet experienced the fun of pressing apple cider, we'll break it down for you...a wide variety of apples are collected (the more variety the better the cider tastes) and stored. The apples are then mixed up and washed and then sent to the cutting table. They're then quartered and all the soft spots and bad parts are cut out. Then it's off to the press to be squeezed down into two open sided cylinders. As the apples are compressed, the juice runs out the sides and down to the spout where it runs into a container. From there the juice is handed over to the strainers (Nikki's favorite part of cider pressing it turned out) who pour the juice through dish towels to strain out the solids. And lastly, the filtered juice is then bottled and ready to enjoy.

If it sounds like a lot of work, it's probably because it IS a lot of work. This year it took about 25 people almost 5 hours to get 75 or so gallons of cider. Of course, with a crew of Stauffers there's always plenty of gabbing going on throughout the day, so time really flew by. And there's nothing quite like a tall glass of freshly pressed cider to reward a day of hard work.

Photo recap of the day is above...