Home-grown Organic Fresh Apple Cider

The Jonagold apple tree in our yard yields a reasonable amount of fruit every other year. This year was the good-yield one. Since we don't use any pesticides, many of the apples were happily visited and inhabited by codling moth and beetles, and quite a few squirrels and birds helped themselves as well. Finally, it seemed like it was time to harvest the remainder.

Sensing a lesson in there somewhere and a chance to work together as a family, we embarked on a joint effort to pick the apples and make fresh apple cider. Everybody had a job to do and within 3 hours we had a gallon and a half of fresh apple cider - the fruits of our labor.

Kids and Papa picked the apples, sorting them as best as they can.

The youngest filled a colander at a time with apples; dunked the colander in a handy bucket of water to rinse the apples; then brought it to Papa at the table. Papa used the apple corer to core the apples, while the older child and I sorted through the cut sections to discard any yucky pieces and save the good ones.

When all the apples were cut and sorted and ready, Papa juiced them in the juicer, while I did an initial filtering to extract fresh cider and store in the fridge.

And now the small and unassuming little tree stands barren, getting ready for fall, and another year of minimal yield.