Major farm respect, and hands-on cider pressing and chickens

Major farm respect, and hands-on cider pressing and chickens

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• 9.16.2014

Our friends' CSA had a cider pressing open house over the weekend, and we went along with them and their 11-month-old. While we've had a CSA for several seasons now (husband has a list of our faves here), we haven't had one that we picked up at the farm in years and we don't get to spend a lot of time where our food is grown or raised.

I love visiting places like this and experiencing a tiny, tiny piece of the magic (and work) of living in touch with your food. I dream of someday having chickens and a big garden, but until then it's great to support people who do and can provide to others, and I have so much respect and appreciation for farmers like our CSA sources.

So it's great when we can come visit for something like this cider pressing party and potluck of snacks made with lots of their CSA share ingredients!

We went through buckets of apples! Everyone had a chance to wash them, cut off the bad parts, and sort them into the buckets ready for the press.

We put our husbands to work.

Then we threw the chopped-in-half apples into the top part of the press and cranked.

(Funnily I didn't actually taste any of the cider and I don't really drink juice, but I'm sure it was very good!! And I'm sure so much better than storebought, so fresh and organic and all.)

The pulp goes to the cows or compost rather than going to waste!

One of my favorite parts was hanging out in the shady orchard with the chickens. We helped the little one give them some feed--husband took a nice long video of it!

Yay farm time!

It may still be u-pick apple, pear, and even stone fruit season near you--you can check out LocalHarvest.org for locations!