Thursday, December 8, 2011

The Weekend of the Apples

We in the Coder household have just lived through a momentous time. Not the Year of the Scorpion, not the Month of the Dandelion (you like that? No, it's not a real thing, I just made it up. But, yeah, it's good enough to have been a real thing. Maybe. Well, you may thing this is just another totally random and non-essential parenthetical rabbit trail. But I don't want to put thoughts in your head) - oh no. Our past few days have been prodigiously dubbed the "Weekend of the Apples" *queue dramatic music*. Yep. A week or so ago, a crazy trip to Hood River resulted in this: 
(In case you're wondering, the smell is heavenly)

Namely, twenty-seven hundred pounds of apples taking up residence in our garage. (Actually, originally there were forty-five hundred, then some friends came and picked up their two bins, leaving us with three, two of which were ours, the third belonging to a soon-to-be-named, family of friends who, upon taking their aforementioned third left us with two, the weight of which was approximately eighteen hundred pounds - but I'm getting to that.)


What does one do with hundreds of pounds of apples, you ask? Allow me to inform you: "One" makes apple cider! 

Soo yum!
Where was I? Oh yes, the Weekend of the Apples *queue dramatic music*. With hundreds of pounds of apples, and mouths watering for a sip of freshly-pressed cider, we invited our awesome friends the Spaffords over for a little cider-pressing fun...

                 

...which soon turned in to some friendly-competition-cider-pressing-fun...

The Little Girls' Team (Megan, Madeline, and Ania)

They were a wee bit short for the wheel, so their
heroes (the big bros) had to help
  
Then The 14-Year-Old Team (JT and Kayleen)


(In case you're wondering why Ben and Jonathan are in almost every shot and seem to be doing...something...with every team: they were necessary to stabilize the press because of the great speed as which the teams were cranking out the cider!)


The Mama Team!!!


Aren't they great? :)

The Awesome-ness Team (haha - that'd be me with the...hair, and
Charae with the beautiful smile!)
 
This is "The Boys Team" and - though I know this breaks your heart - it is my unpleasant duty to inform you that they beat the stellar, unbeatable time Charae and I set. But, rest assured, if we were them, we could have beaten us, too. :D

In the end though, the ultimate, Cider-Pressing Champion was (drum roll, please), Daddy! Single-handedly, he schooled "The Boys" by having the the best time by 30 whopping seconds! Sadly, the only picture I have of this strapping specimen of a man is at the beginning of the post, pouring cider for the taste-testing! We made over 15 gallons Saturday, followed up by another 10 or so Sunday afternoon. It was truly a crazy, yummy, full-of-fun, Weekend of the Apples *queue dramatic closing music*. Now we only have about 500 pounds left to process! I feel a "Weekdays of the Apples" coming on.

*queue dramatic music*

4 comments:

Lynnae said...

You tired of apples yet :) WE had so much fun with y'all! I was thinking, it was funny, here about three years ago we met getting apples, and here we are about three years later making apple cider together :)

Jo said...

Wow! That IS a lot of apples! Look like you had a blast, and now you get to enjoy the fruits [correction: fruit juices :P] of your labor! :)

Unknown said...

Looks like you all had so much fun!

Hannah Woltersdorf said...

That is awesome! Our family has made cider before and it is so much fun!

Love,
Han

www.hannahdorf.blogspot.com

www.hannahrebeccagw.blogspot.com