Day 2 - Hard Cider 2008

I've got a confession to make. It's been a week since I harvested my last apple. While I've been scratching around, Dan has been working. He picked another four boxes of apples.

I bought a fruit picker today at the hardware store. I can't believe I've been making hard cider for five years and I'm just now buying a fruit picker. Rediculousness!!!

Harvesting fruit today was a joy. The sun was soft, the fall colors were ablaze, and I was in the shade most of the day.

With the help of my super-human friend, Kristal, we harvested five giant boxes of apples today. We even had time for a leisurely two hour luch break/photo shoot.

After lunch we drove up the street and picked three trees in the middle of an abandoned lot. We would've kept picking, but a thunderstorm blew in.

Here's me tempting Old Man Death. I guess he wasn't in my neighborhood that day. Luck for me, eh?!

Here's a great staged photo of me. This picture was taken while I was harvesting the first tree of the day.

Me and my new fruit picker. This photo was taken after luch in the abandoned lot. Most of the apples were way up in the crowns of the trees. Thanks to Kristal's fearlessness about heights, we harvested two huge boxes of primo apples.

Here's a picture of an overflowing box of apples. You can't see my face, but I'm really happy.

It's been a wonderful year for apples. Dan and I have outdone ourselves this year. It's safe to say that we've harvested at least twice as many apples this year as we did last year. I'm glad that we're done harvesting apples, but now the hard work begins - grinding and pressing.

We're planning a "white washing" party on Friday the 26th. The name is in reference to the famous scene in Mark Twain's novel, Tom Sawyer, when a sly Tom fools a bunch of neighborhood kids into painting the fence for him.

Grinding and pressing apples is a tedious and dirty work, but it is fun - at least for the first couple of hours.