An Apple a Day

Dearest blog reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. Yesterday was a red letter day. Last evening as the sun was sitting in the west, we were entertaining the limerick contest winner, presenting her with her cherry pie reward, surrounded by family and friends. As the festivities progressed, I opened the season's first gallon of cider and enjoyed it out on the patio. A gallon that was delayed for a year. A delay caused by last year's warm spring and some of my reader's cavalier attitudes surrounding the weather moderating effects of improper flannel sheet deployment. That unseasonably warm February and March coaxed the apple blossoms out in early April. Those tender blossoms were aborted by three days of below freezing temperatures on April 14, 15, and 16. No blossoms, no fruit, no cider, no lip smacking goodness.

Taking a long drink, the first sweet cold drops surrounding my tongue while listening to the fire crackle in the fire pit, thinking that delayed gratification can be okay in moderation. Taking a long drink, smacking my lips in satisfaction, I know that this isn't just any apple cider. It is unpasteurized apple cider. That makes it better for a lot of reasons. It tastes better. It gives the drinker a daring feeling of living on the edge with those natural germs and all. Well okay, it's better for two reasons.

I know what you're thinking. "I thought that unpasteurized cider was illegal." Not so uninitiated one. If you buy "pet grade" cider, you are fine. Nahhhhh! I'm just messing with you. That's milk. As long as you buy it from the orchard and not a third party, it can be unpasteurized. Fortunately, I have lived a mile and a quarter from such an orchard for fifty years. Tucked away in a faded white barn, up against a hill side that holds three hundred trees, hundreds of bushel apple crates will be filled with Gala, Granny Smith, Mutzu, Red and Golden delicious apples. Most years a bumper crop will come down the hillside, into the back room, onto the sorter and into the cooler. The discards into the press room where they are ground into pulp and pressed into higher golden nectar service.

Most years a bumper crop, but about every third or fourth year, a crop failure is visited on Tranbarger's small orchard. Rarely, do they experience one as severe as last year. Anticipation of the annual crop report means that the first fall visit is always the most important one. Walking under a low porch roof on that first day, I always ask, "good crop?" As good neighbors, they know that the question is really, "how long will the season last?" In the past, a good year was mid-November; a bad year mid-October. However, recently, a new elementary school opened just down the road with 15 soccer fields full of after school, snack loving, single serving, cider guzzling, waifs. A situation that has shown the need for recalibration. Now, a bumper crop may see a trick-or-treater, but it is unlikely.

So an eight week window has opened. It is fueled by doctor repelling cliches. Can you eat five apples a day for 56 days and will the effect be cumulative? Either way this cider and these apples remind me of my favorite time of year. As the year would slip past Labor Day, Sharritt's little dairy farm would start the calving season; sixty calves in ninety days. Each evening, it was our responsibility to walk through the dry cow pasture field looking for new borns, evenings with longer and longer shadows, broken beams of sunlight illuminating golden rod and iron weed. Looking high and low, we would find a calf and its mom and start herding them toward the barn.

A group of nine and ten year olds gain a world of knowledge about influence and pressure moving a cow and calf down a country road. A well placed and timed step produce a much better outcome that wild gesticulation and iron weed sword play; too aggressive and momma bolts, heading out through town. Not persistent enough, she doubles back on you wanting to return to the old haunts.

 After registering the cow's id number and the sex of the calf, we would run to my grandmother's kitchen for an apple and a glass of cider. Then back out to the evening with more chores; feeding the weaned brothers and sisters, picking pumpkins or shucking Indian corn, hopefully finishing early enough to play a game of kickball or two games of hide and go seek. It was the frenetic action of kids trying to play before night time and homework collapsed around our shoulders.

I hope this finds you doing well. It leaves me doing very well indeed. Cheers!

Take care

Roger