Elliot's First Cider Mill Run: Cider Yes, Donuts No

Episode four of Just A Little Shady opens with a Michigan fall ritual, executed early and on purpose, before the crowds showed up.

Two weeks after the Home Depot pumpkin-man incident, Hailie Jade is back with a gentler chapter in Elliot's first real autumn: the cider mill trip. The destination was Yates Cider Mill, the Rochester Hills institution that has been pressing cider since 1863, and the timing was tactical.

For more on the show itself, I drove to Detroit in August for Just A Little Shady's Season 5 pop-up at Mom's Spaghetti and met Hailie and her co-host Brittany Ednie in person.

Hailie Jade: "I took Elliot to Yates the weekend before this past weekend. Point is, no one was there, and it was a great experience."

By the podcast's math the visit landed on the weekend before Labor Day weekend, which she and her co-host framed as due diligence: two cider mills already visited, crowds beaten, fall officially underway before September even started.

Set to start at 1:10, as the cider mill report begins. Episode four went up September 11.

The first drink that was not water

The detail that makes this more than a cute outing: the cup of cider was a genuine first.

Hailie Jade: "It was Elliot's first cider mill experience where he could actually have cider and donuts. [...] He did like the cider though. He's never had anything except water."

Elliot, who was born in March 2025 and is now eighteen months old, apparently treated the moment with more restraint than his mother expected.

Hailie Jade: "I will say I'm kind of proud he didn't like chug it down. I was nervous, I'm like, this kid's going to just take [it]. But he didn't, he just was kind of reluctant about it. I'm sure that won't last forever, but for now it is what it is."

Not a sweets kid

The donuts, the other half of the Michigan cider mill contract, went nowhere.

Hailie Jade: "I fear he is not a sweets kid, so the donuts were not really for him. But that's like his mama, because I prefer salty over sweet."

The kid's counterprogramming of choice, per the episode: fries, which he also tried recently for the first time and approved of. Salty over sweet, straight down the maternal line.

The rest of the fall calendar got sketched out too. Labor Day itself was a lay-low family weekend, football season has started and the household is, in her words, hoping for a week one win, and October's plans are already forming around Halloween, the holiday this family treats as a season, not a day.

The quiet part

There is something worth noticing in how ordinary all of this is. The most famous rapper alive's grandson gets his milestones logged the way any Michigan family logs them: a cider mill before the rush, a cautious first sip, a verdict on donuts. Hailie has been deliberate for years about which parts of her life go on the feed and which do not, and the podcast has settled into a rhythm where Elliot appears as a character in stories rather than a face on camera.

Grandpa, as ever, goes unmentioned. He is presumably aware that the newest member of the family has now formally sided with the savory faction. Somewhere in the vault there is probably a song about that too.