How Down County Farmer Kids Made Apple Cider in the 70's

There are many ways to make homemade apple cider, but here is how we did it.

First, you have to have an antique apple press, but you don't know it's an antique because it's just a tool that's been in the family for a long time, and something that you use every year when apples are in season. Usually we make applesauce with all the "extra" apples that all the kids didn't eat (including ourselves), but we loved to take out the press and make the cider.

You are supposed to put the apples in a bucket and fill the bucket with water to "wash" the apples. Then, try to pick out the ones that don't have too many worms in them. If the apples have worms, we were supposed to cut that part out and give the leftovers to the pigs. Yes, every down county farm has pigs!

Spray out the cider press with the water hose and position some sort of bucket or pan to receive the cider once the press is started. I don't remember what went there so well any more. The press is a hand cranked sort, so we take turns doing the cranks, which was actually fun to do. We were kids, so it was usually a competition over who could turn it the most times. Of course, sometimes the garden hose sprayed people and not just apples, a good thing for the hot summer days.

Then, it's simple: drop in the apples, more as the apples get pressed thru, make sure the discard pan collects the mashed up seeds and skins and other junk that squishes out. Of course, sometimes a worm-apple gets dropped in and you can't get it back out once it goes down. Sometimes a daddy long legs gets dropped in, just for fun, I think! The reasoning was, "it's going to get cooked anyway, so any bugs that are in it will be sterilized by then."

Disclaimer: this photo is not my original. Unfortunately, I cannot find the original to give proper credit, but this is very close in design to the one we used to use. Apples go in from top, hand crank, and juice comes out down below. If I can, I will post an actual photo from our family cider mill.

Give the pressed apple juice to Grandma to have her cook it in large pots on the stove for some amount of time, I think until it gets to almost boiling for a certain amount of time. She usually canned most of the juice/cider for us to have in the winter time, but we did get to drink some at the time.

And tasty it was. I fondly remember making the cider, as well as the many other projects and chores we had to do on the farm. Maybe some of them were less "fond" than others, but when they are all dropped in the memory bank, I do appreciate many parts of my childhood. Another bonus that came out of our apple cider press project, besides the fun we had in the moment, was when I learned later in life that a certain percentage of bugs is acceptable in inspections by the USDA. Ewww!

Want to know how to make your own apple cider press? Check out the website here!