Apple Pickin'

Our good friend Kelly introduced me to another new friend, Jillian, by way of association.  Turns out Kelly knew Jillian when she lived in the same town in northern Washington and then Jillian and her family ended up moving to Gig Harbor.  The coincidences get weirder - like Jillian bought the house that I was seriously considering buying on Fox Island when we moved here.  And then her son and Cannon played water polo together.  It's a small world, isn't it?

Anyways, Jillian is one of those super mom types that we all aspire to be but fall dreadfully short of.  Like she makes her own bread (which I sometimes do), but first she grinds the wheat to make the flour (which I don't do).  I think she stops short of actually growing her own wheat, but that could come next summer...

Anyways, she was most fascinated by all the apple trees growing around the area here this fall and decided to harvest all the apples instead of let them go to waste.  Well, maybe she didn't hit up every apple tree, but she did clear the trees of several of her neighbors!  One morning she invited Kelly to come down from LaConner and me to come over and we attacked some more trees.

Heading down the drive with apple pickin' equipment

Our first method was to shake the branches - you got wet from the dew!

 Then we got serious and got ladder and pole-thingy and pulled down tons of apples.

A small part of the stash...

 Once we had knocked off all the apples we could, we hauled the stash back to Jillians to make some apple cider.  Jillian has a professional juicer which made quick work of it.

Jillian and Kelly

Making the juice

 Jillian has perfected this art so we boiled the juice to 160 degrees to pasturize it.  It was delicious!!!  Jillian's next pursuit is to turn some of this kid-friendly cider into adult-friendly cider...