photo by: Nick Krug

First-grader Tay'Jah Franklin quickly tosses two apples into an apple press to be ground into mush and squeezed of their juice to produce apple cider on Sept. 14, 2016 at Sunset Hill School. Mel and Joyce Williams, owners of MJ Ranch north of Lawrence in southern Jefferson County, gave a demonstration to three classes at Sunset Hills on how cider is made. Their grandson, Anthony Luna, left, who is also a first-grader at Sunset Hills, helped in the demonstration.

It’s a little after 10 a.m. Wednesday outside Sunset Hill Elementary School, where a group of first-graders watch in what could only be described as pure, childlike wonder as Joyce Williams demonstrates how to peel an apple.

Using an old-fashioned tabletop peeler and corer, Williams turns a crank that spins the apple round and round, removing stripes of bright red skin with each rotation. The kids ooh and ahh at the effect. “That’s amazing,” one says, seeing the spiral of peel take shape.

“It doesn’t take much,” their teacher, Kendra Luna, says with a knowing smile.

She might not be amazed on this particular day, but then again, she’s seen the process countless times before. For more than two decades, Luna’s parents, Joyce and Melvin Williams, have journeyed from their cattle ranch north of Lawrence one day a year to share their apple cider-making tricks with Sunset Hill students.

They were a little delayed Wednesday by rain — and the birth of their newest calf — but managed to make the trek with a little help from their son-in-law and grandkids. Lane Luna, an eighth-grader at nearby West Middle School, took a break from classes to lend a hand setting up the Williams’ apple press, an antique-looking contraption that relies on the manual turning of a crank to grind apples into cider.

Lane’s younger brother Anthony didn’t need a parents’ note to join the fun. His mom is also his teacher at Sunset Hill.

“We enjoy the kids,” Joyce says of why she and her husband have kept the tradition alive all these years. But her grandchildren — Anthony, at 6, is the youngest — are growing up.

At 75 and 79, she and Melvin are getting older, too. That’s why today’s demonstration, she expects, will likely be their last at Sunset Hill.

“Grandkids are what’s special,” Joyce says. “But we’re not young anymore.”

The couple, who first started making cider more than 20 years ago, still maintain a small orchard on their property, though making a commercial venture of it doesn’t seem to interest the Williams much.

The cider, they say, is mainly a hobby, meant to be enjoyed by family and maybe a few friends. But Joyce says it’s important that the younger generation understand where food comes from and how it’s made.

“I think that’s good for them to know, that there’s effort put into what they eat, and it just doesn’t grow on trees.

“Well, apples do,” she admits. But the other stuff — cider, apple butter and the rest — takes some work.