As the autumn landscape lights up with leaf color, our family looks tree-ward for other inspiration—clusters of ripening apples in our small orchard of fruit trees. These amber, yellow and green fruits shine like jewels amid the thick green leaves and are the fodder for cider making, an annual event that draws family and friends around the rhythmic cranking of our two small cider presses. 
About 20 years ago, my husband, Doug, had the foresight to start an orchard in our side yard. He planted space-conscious dwarf and semi-dwarf varieties such as ‘Grimes Golden’, ‘Jon-A-Gold’, ‘Golden Delicious’, ‘Cortland’, ‘Winesap’ and ‘Fuji’. Each spring brings a flurry of pink and white petals, followed by a summer of slowly swelling fruit. When the wild asters and goldenrod are blooming in the ditches near our house, autumn has arrived. It’s apple time. We haul out our apple ladder and the cider presses, and enlist tall kids to pick apples and small kids to gather up windfalls for cider. Cider pressing is remarkably easy. We have two small presses—a rustic red antique press and a new hardwood press. Both have a grinding and pressing mechanism. Washed apples are dumped into an open hopper and the grinding begins. After we’ve ground up about a bushel of apples, we press the mass
and all eagerly wait for the first rivulet of cider to roll out of the bottom of the press into a waiting pitcher.
Let it be said that we are big cider fans. What we don’t drink right away (everyone stands around the press with his or her own cup, ready to sample each batch), we freeze for later. On a warm autumn day of pressing, sweat bees join us and buzz around the press while our sheep stand patiently at the fence, waiting for us to toss over the leftover pressed apple mash.
Our first batch is usually all ‘Golden Delicious’, because these are our sweetest apples. Then we start mixing different apple varieties (using an arbitrary ratio of sweet, spicy and tart apples) to come up with our own un-reciped and spontaneous cider. After the third pressing, we start to get really creative and toss in other fruit from the garden—seckle and Bartlett pears along with deep purple Concord grapes. One year, we had to stop our youngest son from lobbing ripened tomatoes into the hopper. Each pressing is unique—and usually proclaimed THE BEST by the person who has cranked the grinder or turned the press the longest.
Cider making marks the end of the gardening season at our farm. The late autumn apple harvest is generally the last of the “crops” we raise. As we wash down the presses and store them for next year, we know we have a few months of cider in the freezer to sweeten the long winter ahead.
Editor’s Note: Karen Weir-Jimerson lives in rural Iowa with her husband and two sons. They share their farm with 6 dogs, 12 cats, 6 sheep, 5 miniature donkeys, 3 horses, a flock of chickens, 2 rabbits, 2 canaries and a tortoise.
|
