I grew up in an apple producing area of NYS.
When I was a kid it was an annual event for the fam to go to an orchard and pick a bushel of apples (remeber those wonderful bent wood bushel baskets with the wire handles?) for $1. Of course it was pick-your-own so we kids ate half a bushel while we picked. We also climbed all over the trees and came home with belly aches and killer cases of poison ivy along with the apples.
The apples sat in the dark cold basement all winter long and if you went down there the air smelled of them.
Besides the picking apples and bakeries with wonderful Apple Everything, the area was rotten with cider mills where you could open a tap and pour a glass or a gallon of the most delicious drink I've ever had or, sometimes, get into the presses where you could watch the huge hydraulic pistons push down through wooden cages and expel rivers of golden cider into the vats leaving about 2" of apple "felt" for the cows.
We went back home for the first time in decades last Fall. We drank gallons and gallons. I wish we could do it every year! So different from SoCal. So many wonderful memories!
When I was a kid it was an annual event for the fam to go to an orchard and pick a bushel of apples (remeber those wonderful bent wood bushel baskets with the wire handles?) for $1. Of course it was pick-your-own so we kids ate half a bushel while we picked. We also climbed all over the trees and came home with belly aches and killer cases of poison ivy along with the apples.
The apples sat in the dark cold basement all winter long and if you went down there the air smelled of them.
Besides the picking apples and bakeries with wonderful Apple Everything, the area was rotten with cider mills where you could open a tap and pour a glass or a gallon of the most delicious drink I've ever had or, sometimes, get into the presses where you could watch the huge hydraulic pistons push down through wooden cages and expel rivers of golden cider into the vats leaving about 2" of apple "felt" for the cows.
We went back home for the first time in decades last Fall. We drank gallons and gallons. I wish we could do it every year! So different from SoCal. So many wonderful memories!
You'd have to put up with us dang hippies, but the home grown food is worth it. XD
Hale farm and village (a living pioneer town) has an apple festival most years with apple butter making and apple picking and cider presses running. Used to go every year when I was very wee, and we'd get those old fashioned candy sticks to take home - you know, the ones like not curvy candy canes that would get sharp edges in your mouth. Yum. <3
(jkjk.... Mostly.)
These days it's probably green apple. I like the sour stuff.
