Apples to Applejuice

The day after returning home from Idaho (October 1), I invited my neighbor Sam to come help me convert apples to apple juice. It was a lot of work, and I was so glad that she came to help me! It was also fun to chat while we cut up the apples and slammed them into the juicer. 

I borrowed these mixers from my mom last fall...and then never used them. And I forgot to bring them with me when I went to pick up the pigs...and the apples were needing to be juiced. Thankfully, I didn't get in too much trouble (maybe Mom was happy to have an excuse to miss out on juicing this year?), and my Grandma even sent me home with two big boxes full of wind-fallen apples. 

It took Sam and I a bit to figure out how to put the juicer together. A call to Mom and a YouTube video later, we were in business. I lamented that I didn't have bread bags to hook to the discharge pipe, but we figured out how to make a grocery sacks work. And it was weird doing this in the suburbs where we had to just throw the excess away since none of our neighbors have pigs or cows. Someday, I'll be completely used to it. Maybe. 

 Eva and Michael wanted to help. Michael lost interest after two apples. Eva stuck around for quite a bit of it.

 All that work and we got four gallons of juice. I got to keep two gallons, and I sent these four jars home with Sam.

There is nothing quite like this juice, and it made me really happy to have some in my home again. I never thought I would miss things like this so much!