I'm casually thinking about making cider in the fall, but the equipment overhead is a bit daunting: all of the purchase-able apple grinder/press setups online are well over $200. Anybody have a setup to do this? Or know some other way to easily extract the apple juice?

Although I guess I could just buy non-alcoholic cider and let it ferment, I'd really prefer to do it from scratch.

Use a juicer. It is a bit time consuming, if you are going to make a large quantity of cider, but what you are trying to do is separate the liquids from the solids in the apples. A juicer will do that very efficiently, and you can probably find a good one cheap on ebay or Craig's List.

Won't it take a few years for the trees to mature enough to produce fruit after you plant them?

Something like this?

The pigFarm/orchard/brewery/charcuterie dream will have to wait until I move to the suburbs, sadly

Yes. There are probably a zillion different brands, and I'm afraid I can't help with a specific recommendation as to which is best. But people tend to buy them with all sorts of good intentions to make healthful drinks for themselves and then end up not using them, so you may well find one for sale on Craig's List a lot cheaper than that.

lazy hippies