 Our state-of-the-art, cider mill was created by converting our 150 year old barn. This barn is an example of the skill and ingenuity of our ancestors and is a symbol of Michigan's proud agricultural heritage. You can read more about it's history below.
Our Cider Mill features the "latest" in cider-making technology, the continuous J-Belt Press, in which the apple pulp is squeezed by large rollers pressing the pulp between two wide, smooth belts. The semi-automatic bottler completes the process so that fresh, pure apple cider is ready to take home or enjoy right away in gallons, 1/2 gallons and pints. Enjoy our blends of Apple-Cherry Cider or Apple-Peach Cider, too.
On fall weekends, we invite our guests to witness every step of our meticulous cider-making process from the apples (hand-picked from the tree) to processing, offering a premium fruit product. Sample and purchase our freshly-made, safe Apple Cider, our Cider Blends while visiting the Cider Barn. And don't forget some of our farm-made, traditional cider mill Donuts. Check out our Apple Cider Recipes and more of our favorite apple recipes!
In the 1850's a barn was built on the west side of the Westview Orchard's farm to provide shelter for the farm's work horses, food storage for the farm animals and farm equipment. The original roof was a gabled roof which was removed and replaced with a gambrel roof in the early 1900's when the barn was converted into a dairy and livestock barn. The gambrel roof design offered a much larger area to store hay and straw for the livestock. This second roof, with its cedar shakes, is still intact under today's modern shingles.
 Barn construction techniques reflect the barn's age when examining different parts, such as the interior: (1) use of a broad axe squaring/hand hewing the round logs (usually cut from the farm) into square beams (horizontal beam, middle area); (2) circular markings on another square beam from a sawmill (horizontal beam, south end) typical of early 1900's; (3) tenon and mortise joints, and round wooden peg holes; (4) original barn windows have been removed and saved: (5) original threshing floor doors (west side); (6)haymow/hayloft have original floors and mounted ladders; (7) the pulley and its track are intact running the length of the barn (north to south); and (8) the sliding wooden door in front of the silo opening still moves smoothly on its original rollers manufactured by the Eugene Mack Company in the late 1800's when Romeo was a bustling industrial area making carriages and related items).
Looking at the barn's exterior structures: (1) the round, block silo - probably added to the barn in the 1900's since they were usually an underground storage structure in the 1800's; this round shape was stronger and offered greater storage capacity than the square and wooden silos, and exposed the stored silage to less air, thus preventing its spoilage over the winter months; (2) much of the original tongue-and-groove wooden siding is still intact (porch side); (3) the original barn door latches, handles and hinges have been removed and stored.
Westview's 1850's barn, now our Cider Mill, stands as a proud tribute to the ingenuity and fortitude of the 1800's American farmer. A farmer not only had to be hard-working and industrious in his fields/orchards, but also had to have marketing know-how, be a competent architect/carpenter/blacksmith to build something that would last over 100 years. He/she did not work alone, but as neighbors, they would harvest crops and construct farm buildings as their farmer neighbors needed. This built a very cohesive neighborhood "family", something rarely experienced today.
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