Sundays in the Country

Sundays in the country feel different to me than Sundays in the city. Like any day, there are more chores than can fit in a day, but folks are perhaps a bit more judicious in figuring out what chores to tackle on the Sabbath and at what pace they tackle them.

Yesterday was the perfect day. It was quite chilly when we woke up to the sun coming up over the horizon and slanting into our open french doors. It felt like a Canada morning -- or perhaps one in late September. Ed brought me coffee in bed and a Sunday New York Times, dated May 20.

Later, much later, we headed out to mulch some bushes, harvest some corn, okra and tomatoes, and check on all the tree seedlings in the back and upper fields. It was noon before we knew it, time to head back in for peak-season BLTs. 

Our neighbor called to say that she and her husband had borrowed an old-fashioned apple press and would be making cider later in the afternoon. Did we want to come down? You bet! Ed was meeting another neighbor who was coming down with his bush hog in the afternoon to cut our fields, so I grabbed a paring knife and headed to the cider-making scene without him.

Jon and Sandy have a half dozen apple trees in their far back yard, heavily laden with apples. Only one variety is currently ripe and they had harvested a bushel of them earlier in the morning. We sat around two common buckets – coring the apples, slicing them into big chunks and chucking them into one bucket, the cores into the second one. The rhythm was nice, as was the conversation. When the apple bucket was full, we'd feed the apples into the cider press and Jon would crank them through the grinder.

Once we had all the apples pulverized, Jon fitted a heavy pressing disc with a steel plate into the top of the open-ended bucket of processed apples and then began to screw it down, causing it to press harder and harder on the apples. Seconds later, beautiful golden apple cider started to flow into the wooden tray holding the bucket and then into the sterilized quart mason jar that Sandy had placed under the spigot.

The bushel of apples yielded only three quarts of apple cider. I brought a quart home to share with Ed and Jack who declared it as good as – or maybe even better – than the gallons we buy from Reid's Orchard in Owensboro. It was a lovely way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon. Yes, Sundays in the country are different.