In the fall my favorite tradition is making apple cider. Uncle Ed and Aunt Bev have a really fantastic cider press they are kind enough to run for us. We provide the apples and as many donuts as we can fry.
The weeks leading up to the pressing, Dad takes stock of the different apple trees on the farms to see which ones have the most apples, or asks neighbors if he and pick their apples if his trees don’t look promising. Picking apples (not to be confused with “apple picking,” which is what city folk do) is a fun task because it involves ladders, or tractors, or climbing apple trees, and/or Dad’s favorite approach: climbing the tree himself and shaking the branches with all his might so the apples drop onto a tarp below. No one is terribly discerning about the state of the apples – Dad’s rule is: as long as they aren’t rotten, they are good for cider. Often he takes a half-rotten apple and scoops out the rotten part with his bare hands, then throws the good half in the bucket for cider.
Whenever anyone asks (and usually a kid does) what happens if there is a worm in an apple. the standard response is: “a little work juice isn’t going to hurt anybody”. So far, that has held true.
Uncle Ed passed away, so the tradition of taking apples to Ed’s farm has most likely come to an end. The past couple of years we have gotten the manual cider press that sits on the front porch of the farm as an ornament up and running and made several gallons of cider. It is as delicious as ever.
-Helen
Spencer Family Cookbook 