Autumn brings the family together for cider

From the time I was a little girl, my family made apple cider

each fall.

We would sort through bins of Goldens, Jonagolds, Standards,

Romes and Winesaps, washing and chipping and hand-pressing the

chips into unprocessed cider in the doorway of my grandparents'

home in the Yakima's west valley.

From the time I was a little girl, my family made apple cider each fall.

We would sort through bins of Goldens, Jonagolds, Standards, Romes and Winesaps, washing and chipping and hand-pressing the chips into unprocessed cider in the doorway of my grandparents' home in the Yakima's west valley.

The autumnal smell of the orchard wafting up the hill, wash bins filled with warm water sloshing and the clink-clink, clink-clink of the press pins signaling the cast-iron downward pressure of the press blocks was always my benchmark that fall had well and truly arrived.

It was a weekend of family laughing, working and enjoying each other's company on a crisp, sunny day.

When my grandmother moved into town a few summers ago, the annual cider-making day was disbanded since we no longer had an orchard 500 feet away and no central location to gather.

Not all of the days were beautiful but they were all filled with one of the many things my family is truly good at - being a family.

While the cider was a great benchmark of the work we did and the quality of the apples, it was more a symbol of the pleasant day we would spend in good-natured ribbing, eating, and catching up.

Someone would run upstairs from time to time to check college football scores or make sure our dinner was cooking on schedule. Kids would climb into apple bins to fill buckets with apples, learning how to stack them without bruising them and culling out those with worms. My dad and his brothers would take turns working the press and then needling their nieces and nephews to do the same. My grandparents, and then my grandma on her own, would flutter around the outside of things making sure everything was done well and that everyone was having a good time.

With my childhood symbol of fall having been removed, I've had to look for more seasonal, and less familial, signs of the new season. Fortunately, I have been able to find it in both internal and external changes but that doesn't mean I don't still miss those great cider-making days.

Pam Robel is the paginator for the Columbia Basin Herald. While her family farms in Moses Lake, her dad grew up an orchardists' son in Yakima and, as she grew up, he taught her about picking apples and the importance of family.