It's Cider Time

Yes it's that time of year when my hubby and I get to make cider.  Last year we had no apples due to a late frost so we were looking forward to the cider this year.  We usually pick all the apples at once and then do our marathon cider making project but it's kind of early this year and all the apples aren't ready.  They have not been keeping very well in the garage either.  We thought now that we're retired we don't have to do it all in one day, so yesterday was the first.  I started saving the half-gal milk jugs in the spring but I wasn't drinking a lot of milk then, so we don't have an unlimited supply of jugs.  My hubby has been working for a few days on preparing the chipper/shredder for the the chopping process and getting the press ready.  I made more muslin bags the other day to use in our small press.  The apples were picked the other day with a variety of apples then yesterday they were washed and bad parts cut out.  I had my usual job of holding the bucket coming out of the chipper which makes me be covered in apple mush so I don a rain poncho with the hood up.  This time I even had to put gloves on because it was too cold for my bare hands in all that mush.  Things progressed smoothly to bottle about 9 gallons of cider in whole and half jugs.  I tasted it last night and we made a very sweet cider.  It's very good but I still prefer a little more tang to it.  It was nice to do a smaller batch instead of the marathons we did in the past.  I still recall the Sunday nights out in the garage making cider so we could have it all done that day.  I'm not as sore as I thought I would be but this is still hard on our backs.  At one point I looked at my hubby and asked "What are we doing?  We could take them all to Fuhrman's and have it done for us."  I know that's not going to happen because down deep we love this and we get to spend some quality time together  -  ha, ha.