The leaves are beginning to drop. Some color is showing itself on the mountainside[s] but the majority of maple leaves are rusty, without their normal brilliance. Because we are Vermonters, we have to explain everything in terms of weather; this year, the lack of brilliance thus far is being put down to the unprecedented height of the water table from the rainy summer. I’m not really sure about the technical expertise for our explanations but there it is and we will be sticking to them.
We had an early, killing frost this spring which had people wondering what our apple crops would be like. Interestingly the trees are actually loaded with fruit. Branches are bending low with so many apples that if they weren’t red they might be mistaken for bunches of grapes. It is the beginning of cider-season.
The garden production begins to slow down as we roll into September. We’re still enjoying dinners where the we grew the majority of food on our plates, but we don’t have to spend quite as much time picking, packing and freezing. Just as that begins to slow down, the cider season begins.
We drink cider as part of morning smoothies almost every day of the year. We also use raspberries that we have grown and, in good years, will freeze as many as 65 quarts making it possible for us to use them in a variety of ways from our freezer until the new crop is ready for picking. Some years we are able to use our own cider well into the winter but can’t quite get over the hump to the next summer: so each fall we vow that this will be that year.
In the grocery store recently, Paul noticed gallons of cider selling for between fourteen and sixteen dollars each. It didn’t seem there could be any pricing in the grocery store that could shock us these days but this one did.
Summer walks take us past the apple trees and when they begin to drop, it indicates they are ripe and ready to press. We try to gather up the apples from under the big tree in our garden before the sheep eat them all but before long we are dragging our wood trailer, full of wood apple baskets, plastic buckets and milk crates down our road. Two of our three border collies ride shotgun, perched either on the back of the ATV, in the wagon or running alongside our parade. When we have picked clean the trees on our farm, we get permission from our apple-tree-bearing neighbors to begin using their fruit, rental payment being a gallon of fresh cider cold off the press.
Last night we got home after dinner and, knowing we wanted to press again today, quickly gathered together what we needed and headed out. We each took a different tree and used our personal picking-style. Paul dropped to his knees and gathered from the cooling grass. I pulled my headlamp onto my forehead and, careful not to break branches, began pulling red orbs into my basket. We quickly filled what we have brought, loaded them up and headed home in the ever earlier twilight.
Beginning in September, we drag the red steel cider press and chopper out from the garage onto our deck and there it lives until we have met our quota. Often neighbors and friends join in making cider, often with their own apples, people on the crank ‘n chop, others adjusting the cheesecloth and turning the press. Like haying and shearing, we’ve found that if we make it fun people will come and help. I make sure to have plenty of snacks available and a stack of paper cups for tasting.
The choppers take their apples from buckets filled with water and drop them in as someone turns the crank as fast as their shoulder will allow. By the end of fall, I find I can crank much longer than I’m able to at the beginning and I spend an obnoxious amount of time flexing my right arm muscle for anyone who will look. When the big black bucket is full of mulched apples, the choppers lug it over to the press. Teamwork begins as the pressers and choppers work together to load the cheesecloth lined cylinder. Sam, our oldest border collie, is an apple lover from way back and stations himself right in front of the press with the hopes of catching some flying debris, which he always does. I bring a big metal cooking pot out, fill it full of choppings and quickly put it on the stove to boil down for applesauce. Within minutes the sweet smell fills the house and drifts out the windows.
It never fails to surprise and delight friends how fast the cider begins to run. Barely one turn of the pressing disc onto the apples and liquid begins pouring out the spout below. Someone quickly grabs a cup and claims the first taste. After everyone gets a sip, we begin to fill jugs, some gallon, some half gallon, some glass jars. Once we have pressed every ounce out of the apples and released the disc, we now have apple mash. We save a bucket full for sheep and chickens, the rest goes into a wheel barrow, and at the end of the day someone has the job of wheeling it up the road into the woods to dump into a pile and leave for deer or other hungry animals.
When the snow is deep on the ground and the mercury drops below zero in January, we pour cider into our morning smoothies and I take a taste. Immediately I am transported back to these dog days and that first swallow makes me grateful for all that has gone into the process of making it, the neighbors who let us use their fruit and who come and laugh, crank, chop and press with us, the Perley parade of
homemade wagon filled with happy dogs and people wearing headlamps, the fruit from the trees that gift us with pockets of snacks for hiking, pies with steam escaping from fork marks and for the many months that we are blessed with this cider.