A sophomore project, AppleFest is now in its 40th year.

 

Our day begins at Midnight. First, we must clean and quarter 10 - 15 bushels of apples, put them in our kettles, put the heat to them, and begin stirring. Members work shifts taking turns constantly stirring the cooking apples. Somewhere around 3-4 o'clock in the AM, everything is extracted from the kettles and strained to remove peels, cores, seeds, and stems. Now we have apple sauce, which is then transferred back into the kettles to begin cooking into apple butter. Sugar and spice and other stuff nice are added until it finally becomes apple butter by midday.

 

Early in the day, members will also squeeze apples for their juice or "Liquid Sunshine" as we call it. 9:00 a.m. brings our kindergartners for their "sunshine" ceremony. Midafternoon brings the highlight for our elementary students, PreK - 5, as they all come out to taste our apple butter and experience a little time outside enjoying the day.