Pickin' & Pressin'

A couple of weeks ago family came into town, which was perfectly timed for some extra hands to pick apples! One of our neighbors has two large apple trees and said we're welcome to pick as many as we'd like. Apparently this was also one of my nieces first experience picking apples! I think she enjoyed eating them more than picking them :o)

The apples blended in so much with all the leaves, but we still found plenty.

YUUM! Our kind of booty out here in the sticks.

It's a black bear in the tree! Nope, just my brother. He was on the "shaking tree" duty. You had to stay clear below or you got pelted with apples but it helped a ton to get the apples up top.

The men brought the muscle. That 30 gallon trashcan was full!

Now that they were all picked and washed, next was to make apple cider. David knows a guy with a masher and presser so one night we loaded the car full of delicious smelling apples and headed out his way.

I forgot to get a picture of the masher, but this thang really stole the show. His press essentially worked by water pressure. We filled the tank with the mashed apples, and in the center of that tank is a "bag" that gets filled with water and presses the juice out the slits all along the tank. There is a gauge to maintain the pressure you want to so after the initial heavy flow of juice where you need to swap out the buckets often, you can walk away and it does all the work. No turning a crank or anything!

It collected at the bottom and we funneled it into 5 gallon buckets. We made 25 gallons of apple cider in probably an hour and a half!

We gave 5 gallons to the neighbors who let us take their apples, we kept 5 and I canned most of it, and we gave 15 to one of David's coworkers who is going to ferment it to make hard apple cider! (The friend with all the equipment got some too, because he says he leaves it on over night and the small drips end up making about another 5 gallons!) The stuff we didn't can we just drank and it was delicious! This definitely was a team effort and we couldn't be more grateful for friends and family who enjoy doing stuff like this as much as we do.

Stone Firepit

This project has been a constant work in progress, and still isn't all the way complete, but it worked for us at least this season. It started with some grading that needed done on the west side of our house that was causing water damage inside. While David was tearing up the hill it was exposing these large pieces of slate rock. As I was going through and removing all the rocks I figured why not use them for a fire pit in the back. We've had a tire ring that we've used as a fire pit but have always envisioned adding stone or brick around it to make it look nicer. Well look what we've just found! Tons of large stones... fo free! Ideally the stones would be set in place with some mortar but since other projects have taken priority recently, this is working for us.

The tractor helped tear it up and the tiller worked the stuff close to the house

Old school

Cozy retreat

All Wrapped Up

The garden is officially over. Well at least the outside, I have some peppers hanging out to dry to make into a dry spice, but that won't be for a while. As per usual, I learned a lot this gardening season and have plans for our future garden to hopefully make things easier to maintain (mainly the weeds) as well as produce a better yield. If you would like to experience a range of emotions for 8 months, take on gardening, it will definitely put you through the emotional and mental ringer.

I was going through pictures and here are a few that didn't make it into any posts this season. 

I love this attachment for my mixer, it helped to skin, seed and puree the tomatoes. No cooking or blanching required

They ripened early, rotted and then seemed to attract a gross amount of stink bugs. I think we'll pass on this vegetable in future harvests

Quiet and still morning, most of the garden tore out

The fighters

2015 season a wrap