Applemania

Well into autumn’s dance, the apples shine brighter than the leaves. The rest of the summer garden is closing up shop for the season. Frankly, it is a sad sight. We take down the garden trellises and compost the dead tomato and cucumber vines. Death and decay abound. All the while a scent wafts through the autumn air. All of Forest Farm is alive with the fragrance of ripe apples! How fitting. When We arrived at Forest Farm for the season in May the apple blossoms were bursting in brilliant displays of white and pink. The warm scent welcomed us to the land. The present bumper crop was on its way. Indeed, apples are open for business right now. And business is bumping this year! This year’s crop is said to be the best in the last decade, and some orchards expect apples until Christmas. Any drive down the road proves that Maine is enjoying a true bumper crop of apples. The ripe fruit gleam through the branches, which bend down to the ground, as if to gesture an offering.

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The Portland Press Herald writes that “Experts and apple orchard owners say a combination of factors is likely behind this year’s bumper crop. Apple trees tend to be cyclical, so this year’s higher yield follows a lighter harvest last year. Good spring and summer weather also played a role, although the warm late-summer conditions have pushed back the ripening for some popular varieties by a week or two.”

Much of our apple harvest will be put up for the winter. Helen and Scott favored apple sauce. We have made apple sauce, but the bulk of the harvest is going to cider. We simply have too many on our hands. Visitors and neighbors leave the place laden with apples. This past Saturday, we collected as many as we could carry to a local farm for pressing. The whole community came together and pitched in bushels of their apples. Children ran around, dogs played, and the adults ground and pressed apples, then poured and sipped the most fresh and delicious cider money can’t buy.

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The apples were ground using a motorized apple grinder, then pressed using a custom built press. The ground apples go into a mesh bag, which is enclosed in the press. The manual press turns and turns, squeezing out all of the apple’s juices. The cider is collected in a bucket underneath the press. Once a bucket is full of fresh-pressed cider, it can be funneled into recycled plastic containers.

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We now have a few gallons of apple cider! The delicious cider goes down easy this time of year. We will soon turn some into hard cider. Hard apple cider makes an excellent alternative to beer for the gluten sensitive among us. It stores very well, and bottling it allows ease of transportation to any dinner party to enjoy throughout the winter. Cider provides an excellent way to preserve the overabundance of apples that Maine has been blessed with this year. Pressing apples into cider is also a good way to use blemished or fallen apples.

Apples are a gift no matter how we enjoy them. Henry David Thoreau, New England’s favorite philosopher-naturalist, quipped that surely, “the apple is the noblest of fruits.” The tree gives freely, and asks for little in return. We do well to care for the trees. The farmer thanks his apple trees with a nice bed of compost and a neat pruning. Thoreau observes, in his 1862 essay “Wild Apples,” that old English customs displayed the gratitude bestowed upon the faithful trees. On Christmas eve farmers would take a large bowl of cider to salute the apple trees and pour some out, so to speak, to ensure a good harvest next season. The gesture of gratitude known as apple-howling came with phrases and songs.

        “‘Here’s to thee, old apple-tree,
Whence thou mayst bud, and whence thou mayst, blow,
And whence thou mayst bear apples enow!
Hats-full! caps-full!
Bushel, bushel, sacks-full!
And my pockets full, hurrah!

Bear this in mind this year as you harvest your apples. Bear this in mind as you savor them in pies or drink them in ciders. The apple has nourished humans since time immemorial; a true companion. Give thanks, and the trees will give us apples. And cider.

 

Sam Adels

About Sam Adels

Sam and his wife Claire are the resident stewards of the Good Life Center, the homestead of Helen and Scott Nearing in Harborside, Maine. They are learning from the example that Helen and Scott set with their lives: living simply, gardening, and welcoming visitors to their homestead. They are transplants, and like a seedling, they are together putting down roots in order to grow.