Oh Mai Family: Apple Picking with the Bickmeiers

Today we braved the gale force winds to head back to Oak Glen and go apple picking with the Bickmeiers. Truong wasn't as thrilled as he would have been if he'd gone, say golfing, but he was a trooper and took one for the team. Malia was a little pistol this morning and refused to sit in the car seat. Since we couldn't go anywhere otherwise, we sort of wedged her in and strapped her down before she wiggled her way out. Needless to say she wasn't a happy camper. Couple this with her falling asleep in the car about 15 minutes on the road, it made for a really off morning for her. She almost never sleeps in the car so she must have really needed it.

We went to a different ranch this time as our "usual" ranch was closed. Turns out later, they were just late and opened at 10:30am instead of 9:00am as posted on their website. It caused a moment of concern as we promised the boys they could apple pick apples from an actual tree. We ventured a little further down the road and came across a smaller ranch but at least they were open. We picked a small bag of apples (one each for each boy) and wandered around the ranch a bit. The actual apple picking took about 15 minutes tops and since we paid $5 for parking, we were going to stay and fully take advantage of the $5 parking.

I asked if there were other things the boys could do and was told that they could make their own cider. This sounded promising so we decided to try it out. But there were some tour groups ahead of us so we would have to wait about an hour before we could hop on. To kill some time (interesting choice of words) we decided to let the boys try their hand at archery. Yes, ARCHERY. As in a bow and a sharp, pointy arrow. At $1 for four arrows (we did this twice) we quickly saw how much money could be wasted here and moved on to the next activity. Luckily there wasn't anyone at the Knife Throwing booth so we wandered down to the cider press. After fielding a bunch of questions from Kael and Josh, Bromey (the very nice cider press guy) let the boys hop on early, ahead of the tour group. It was very cool. Luckily, I had $26 when I went to purchase the tickets because it cost $26 for both boys to press their own cider (2 gallons total). That's $13 a gallon. I can tell you that I will be enjoying every last drop of it.

First we had to fill up (2) 5-gallon buckets with apples. It takes 1 bucket to make 1 gallon.

Next you have to wash the apples.

Here are the boys washing the apples. They must have gotten their water from the Arctic North because it was effing cold!

Josh is trying to warm his hands while Kael helps by using his one finger.

When the apples are "clean" (they were washed really really fast because we were afraid of frost bite kicking in) they are tossed in the grinder. There's a large cheese cloth lined bucket at the bottom to catch the apple pieces.

When all the apples were ground up, Bromey put the lib on the cheese cloth covered apple pieces and locked the press in place.

The nectar of our labor.

The Dads get to work pressing the cider.

Pouring it in our 2 $13 per gallon containers.

And that, folks, is how you make cider!

I'm glad we went - we had a great time. The kids really liked it because it was so hands-on and Kael really gets a kick out of drinking something he made. With Josh being so anti-fruit, I asked Dennis if they had concerns of Josh now not drinking any apple juice at all when he realizes it's made from actual apples. I just got a dirty look so I guess they hadn't thought about that.