Embracing Change: Making Apple Cider from Our "Rotten Apple Trees"

Apple Cider made from apples with our rotten apple trees. So, so good! We like using recycled bottles for our homemade apple cider.

This past week was another "rotten apple tree" week. However, I believe many people across America felt like those rotten, ugly apple trees I wrote about in last week's post, Apple Picking on the Chicken Farm. There are no words that can truly ease the pain of tragedy or make sense of it. I've seen countless words on social media discussing the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Many of these words were unkind, coming from both political parties. They are words that likely wouldn't be spoken face-to-face, where we could see their impact on others.

The Power of Listening

It doesn’t matter which side of the coin you belong to; we all can listen to each other's pain without causing more hurt. This is simply a way of loving your neighbor as yourself, which is the second of God's commandments.

I believe the only way to push through pain and mourning is through ACTION. Take a walk, go outside, join a Bible study, or give a tired mom a break by taking her energetic kids to the park. You could also join a peaceful debate group or punch a bag at a kickboxing class. Do something to work through this difficult moment in history. Go to church, where God can provide a peace that surpasses all understanding. That’s what I did this past Sunday. God calmed my troubled heart through worship, fellowship, and prayer.

Turning Lemons into Cider

The expression "When Life Gives You Lemons...Make Lemonade" is quite appropriate for this week moving forward. But in this case, when life gives you big, red apples, you make apple cider. So, I’m going to step off my soapbox and grind some apples into sweet submission.

Our apple cider making 'assistants', haha

After picking two bushels of apples, my husband and I got to work prepping to make our homemade apple cider. We always set up our working area in the barn. This way, we can use a hose to spray all the sticky apple juice off the floor. You might even see go-carts and tractors in the background of the pictures.

The Process of Making Apple Cider

We began by rinsing off all the apples in a huge bucket. To make apple cider, the apples don’t have to look perfect. They can have bug bites and look deformed because they are only being used for their juice, not for the fleshy parts of the fruit.

My 'hired hand' husband paid with lots of love.

The apples were then thrown into the apple grinder. My strong husband, Mike, used the hand crank to grind the apples into small pieces. This is the longest and hardest part of making apple cider, requiring a lot of muscle. While Mike was grinding, I kept my hands on the top part of the grinder to stabilize it while he turned the crank. The apple chunks collected in a pot underneath the grinder.

Once the pot was filled with apple pieces, we dumped everything into the apple press. The press was lined with a cloth similar to cheesecloth to collect the flesh, seeds, stems, and all the solid pieces. The apple cider juice flowed through the cloth and poured out of the bottom of the press.

Apple Press

We collected the apple cider in a bowl at the bottom. Once the bowl was filled, we poured the liquid into pitchers to store in our fridge. Mike placed wooden blocks on top of the press to squish the apple pieces even more tightly. This ensured that most of the juice left the apples and got filtered through the cloth. We repeated the process about ten times to crunch up the two bushels of apples and squeeze them inside the press. The entire process took one hour, and by the end, we had three pitchers (about three gallons) of apple cider to enjoy for the rest of the week.

Wooden blocks are used inside the press to squeeze the remaining apple cider through the cloth.

Of course, we would have had more cider if a couple of greedy kids hadn’t come to drink "fresh from the press" apple cider while their mom and dad did all the work, haha.

Finding Joy in the Process

I hope your week isn't another "rotten apple tree week" but a week filled with hope and love. Remember, when life throws challenges your way, find ways to transform them into something beautiful.

Thanks for reading my Country Squawk,

Kelly