Apple picking

Last week we picked apples at a house owned by the parents of some childhood friends of my husband.  His parents live only about half an hour from where Dan lived when he was a kid.  We went up late one morning, and within an hour had amassed quite a collection of apples.

The picture above is after we had already cored about two bags worth of apples for apple juice.  Once the apples are cored, juicing apples with a steam juicer is easy peasy.  You just have to be patient for the juice to come out of the apples.  Each of the two batches took about two hours to juice.  I canned 6 quarts total.

Check out the color variation in the apple juice.  And it is a pinkish color, not the yellow color you get from stores.  Maybe because I don't filter mine?

I had some juice left over which I used to make mint apple jelly.  Emily helped me pick spearmint leaves from the herb garden.  Tabitha helped by looking pretty and not doing too much fussing.

So pretty.