Cider Season

Richard rolled his garden cart into the garage with the “help” of two of his grandsons. Scott stood on one side of his grandpa and Caleb stood on the other. They each held the handle of the garden cart and took half of the credit for Richards hard work. The garden cart carried several homemade apple crates that were heaped with apples. Richard had an orchard that included several different fruit trees including peaches, cherries, plumbs, apricots, and apples. It was apple season. 

Richard had already sorted through his apple harvest and picked out apples that were good enough to store for a while. Those apples would be crated up and stored in the lower part of the barn where it stayed cooler through the fall. They could be used as needed for pie, dumplings, as well as general snacking. The apples that were in the garage had blemishes that prevented them for being good candidates for storing for later use. Those apples were slated to become cider.

Any number of the Henning cousins have been involved in the cider-making process over the years. On this particular occasion, only Dale’s children were present. Their proximity to their grandfather meant that they had the opportunity to spend much more time with Richard and Mary than their other cousins. When Scott was younger, this fact spurred Christa to limit the number of days that he spent with his grandfather to three days a week. She said that if she had let his spend as much time as he wanted to spend with his grandfather, she would never see him.

Richard left the apples in the cart while he set up the cider mill. The cider press consisted of a grinder and hopper mounted above a wooden slat barrel. The whole apparatus was mounted on a hefty stand that stood high enough off the ground to place a five-gallon bucket underneath. He pulled a mesh bag out of a bowl and lined the slat bucket. He turned to address the children behind him.

“Okay,” he began. “Who wants to crank?”

“I will,” Scott volunteered as his brothers and sisters gathered around. 

Scott reach out and grabbed a hold of the handle on a large round wheel that was attached right underneath the hopper. He started to turn the crank slowly at first, then picking up speed until his grandfather nodded his approval. At that point, the other four children started tossing apples into the hopper. A wet crunching sound signified the efficiency of the grinder under the hopper. Soon, juicy chunky pulp started falling out of the discharge end of the grinder into the mesh lined slat barrel underneath. Scott kept cranking and the rest of the children kept tabooing apples into the hopper until the slat barrel got full and instructed everyone to stop.

Scott stopped cranking and stood back to look at the barrel full of pulp underneath the grinder. The apple pulp was piled high in the slat barrel with discernible pieces of skin and seeds easily seen in the pulp. Apple juice was already starting to run out of the spout on the bottom of the platform and into a five-gallon bucket. Richard folded the excess mesh of the barrel liner and placed a thick round piece of wood over the top. Then it was Caleb’s turn to crank. Directly above the slat barrel, there was a flat plate that was attached to the end of a long threaded rod that ran through the top of the press housing where another type of crank was attached to the other end. That crank had four handles so that the person who was cranking could use both hands if necessary. As Caleb cranked that handle, the plate on the other end of the rod lowered until it came in contact with the wooden piece on top of the apple shreddings. Then, he cranked some more. The contents of the slat barrel were compressed towards the bottom of the barrel which pushed all the juices out through the spout. Every time Caleb turned the crank, a surge of juice flowed into the bucket. 

“I think that’s about it,” Caleb declared after a few minutes.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Richard replied as he approached the press. “Let me see if I can do any better.”

Richard grabbed the press crank with both of his meaty farmer hands and proceeded to gain several full rotations beyond what his grandson could achieve. Apple juices once again surged from the spout. Richard stopped cranking soon enough which prompted a question from another grandchild.

“Is it done now, Grandpa?” Kerry asked.

“Not quite,” Richard replied was he reached for something in the corner. “I just need a little more leverage.”

Richard’s large hands closed around an axe handle. He slipped the handle in between two of the crank handles and used the extra length of the axe handle to provide him with the leverage to crank a little bit more. As he cranked, the juice flowed once more until Richard was confident that he had acquired every ounce of moisture that he could from the apple shreddings. He turned the crank in the opposite direction, raising the plate out of the slat barrel. Then, he removed the barrel from its platform and emptied the mesh lining into the bottom of the garden cart. The apple shreddings were dense and surprisingly void of moisture. They were pressed into a cylindrical mass that sat in the bottom of the cart and slowly fell apart under the influence of gravity.

“What are you going to do with those, Grandpa?” Luke inquired.

“Well,” Richard began with his trademark deliberation. “I suppose I’ll take some out to the heifers at the barn, but most of the leftovers will go to my compost pile.”

This process was repeated until all the apples had been shredded and pressed and several five-gallon buckets had been filled with reddish brown cider. Once all the apple crates had been emptied, the cider crew set about ladling the fruits of their labor into gallon jugs.

“Whoa,” Richard chided Kelsey as she ladled cider into a funnel. “Not quite so full. We’re going to put all these jugs into the freezer and if you fill them too full, they’ll explode.”

“Why would they do that?” Kelsey inquired with alarm evident on her face.

“Well, just like water,” Richard began. “Cider expands when it freezes, so you have to leave room in the jug for expansion.”

Kelsey nodded as her grandpa poured the excess back into the bucket. The six-person crew spent the rest of the afternoon filling jugs, rinsing them off, and placing them in the freezer. The children took turns ladling under Richard’s careful supervision. Efficiency was not their strong point. The children were clumsy, easily distracted, and frequently demanded to taste the cider as they worked. Richard would have no doubt been better off recruiting the help of his wife and sending the children off to play. However, the extra time didn’t seem to bother the older Henning. He genuinely enjoyed spending the time with the children and excepted the experience that they were gaining with him as adequate compensation for the decrease in efficiency. 

Finally, hours later, the cider was jugged and put away. The press was cleaned ad placed back into storage. The apple shreddings had been evenly distributed between the heifers and the compost pile, and the garden cart had been returned to its resting place. The five children followed their grandfather through the back door of his house trailer where he sat down on his workshop steps and took his shoes off. Richard stood at the top of the stair as his grandkids followed suit to ensure that none of them tracked sawdust and wood shavings into the house. Mary hated it when sawdust got tracked into the house.

“Are you done?” Mary inquired from the hallway.

“Yes,” Richard responded with a nod. “We’re all done.”

At one point, Richard had attached an electric motor to the crankshaft of the apple shredder on the cider press. I distinctly remember watching the shredding drum spin at an alarming rate as we tossed apples into the hopper from a safe distance. As the apples hit the shredding drum, chunks of apples and drops of juice flew off the wheel in every direction. It was an alarmingly humorous experience. One thing I can say about my grandpa is that he wasn’t afraid to try new things. However, he was also not afraid to scrap an idea that he felt wasn’t working. The next time we made cider, the motor was gone and the cranking wheel was back in its rightful place. It seems that Grandpa had decided that the increased efficiency wasn’t worth the safety issues involved with a shredding drum spinning as fast as it had under electric power.