Apple Harvest Festival

Autumn rolled around, a year on from the beginning of our grand adventure, and because Michael had no reason not to, he headed out east to participate in the festival that is the apple harvest.  It can be a lovely time of year to visit with the leaves in full change and gorgeous thunderheads passing over the valleys as the pictures below attest to.  Or it can be quite cold, very wet, and the creek already overflowing its banks like the year before.

Upstate New York in the fall: changing leaves, wet ground, just the right amount of chill in the air.

 There were a few cold nights and a fair amount of rain, but there were also glorious days of bright sunshine and plenty of outdoor fun to be had.

The cabin in all its glory.

 Sometimes outdoor fun means chores that city-folk find fun, like feeding chickens.

She doesn't seem intimidated at all by birds nearly her size, with beady-eyes, sharp beaks and jerky movements.

Documenting the olive harvest and oil production was one of our most rewarding and well-received blog posts. I found myself taking the same sort of pictures on this trip.

The first step in the apple cider process is...... pick them apples!

Twist, pull, gentle, keep your hands moving

It was a gorgeous second day of picking after standing on metal ladders during periodic thunderstorms the day before.

Everybody's expected to pitch in

17 bushels in this crate (1 bushel is about 40 pounds) and there's an empty right next to it waiting to be filled.

There isn't a set apple harvest, it goes on for weeks as different varietals ripen and as they are needed to press for cider, hard or otherwise. Each cider has its own blend and the juice we pressed for the festival consisted of Jona Gold, Empire, Matsu, Fuji, several others and some pears to comply with New York State unpasteurized beverages law. Most of the hard ciders have many more varieties.

About four presses worth of apples that are to become fresh cider for the Apple Harvest Festival.

Each crate of apples is poured onto the scrubber-rinser and Andrew looks for any last minute rejects, then up they go into the masher.

 The masher grinds the fruit into pulp that is used to build up a stack of layered mats that will be pressed.

Autumn squirting the mash into the ninth mat of the batch. For fresh cider it averaged 13 mats each press.

Ezra folding the porous cloth

Once the stack is built the hydraulic press is engaged and, presto magico, fresh apple cider.  Almost.

This is the juice running out before any pressing occurs.  They call it the "free run" and boy is it tasty.

The press is engaged several times between 2000 and 2500 lbs to extract all of the juice.

I said almost because the fresh apple cider still has to be put in containers.  Dusky's filling gallon and half gallon containers, and I'm topping them up and screwing lids on.  In two days we pressed four times and ended up with 732 gallons of fresh apple cider. I was told that this was a very high gallon per press ratio.  And they said the early warm spell ruined the apple harvest, hah!

Mmm, it looks sooo good

I got chosen for this job because it's the messiest, which means this station attracts the bees, and bees LOVE fresh apple cider.   I was the person least allergic to bees, but it still hurts when you get stung!

There's lots of clean-up afterwards, and using the tractor to dump the spent mash has to be the funnest.  A neat symbiosis to note is that Autumn and Ezra lease some of their pasture to a neighbor who grazes cows on it.  The cows eat the spent mash mixed up in their feed, and the cow manure is added to compost, and eventually fertilizes the orchards that grow the apples in the first place. Neat!

When not pressing apples there was still work to do, Dusky and I paid some attention to the cases upon cases of hard cider. 

Labeling cases of the Bittersweet.

He's using a hairdryer-like contraption to shrink the wrappers to fit tight on these bottles of Essence.  Essence is the Chronic.

So, all of this to-do was down to the Downtown Ithaca Apple Harvest Festival, and the kick-off of Finger Lakes Cider Week.  This was the 30th annual festival and it's held on the Ithaca Commons, which is a really neat walking/shopping/sitting space.  There are a few vendors selling fresh (hot) apple cider, and Eve's is by far the best, and there are all kinds of apple products on offer.  Apple pies, apple turnovers, candied apples, chocolate apples, apple preserves, dried apples, apple art and apples.  There's also funnel cake and donuts, corn dogs and fried oreos, tibetan momos and curried chicken skewers, live music acts and plenty of talented buskers, and beautiful craftwares.  Lots of people turn out for this community tradition.

"Get yer hot apple cider, a dollar a cup.  Step right up, get it while it's hot."

Eve's was also tasting and selling their line of hard ciders.

Michael taking his turn as wine salesman

It's a three day long event, and the additional Cider Week events kept us all busy.  There were several dinners and food-wine pairings at participating bars and restaurants, which meant us laborers enjoyed an after party or two (no pictures from those).  I particularly enjoyed the Westy, a full bar with a kick-ass food truck on the back patio. 

Andrew pouring tastes at the Westy.

A sunny Saturday brought out the crowds and Eve's sold a bunch of wine.  By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around we were beat. The cold and the rain on Sunday ensured that we sold out of fresh hot apple cider, all 732 gallons of it!  All the rain did was make it easier for us to decide to call it day.

"Whataya say?  Wanna close up shop?"

Those Macouns down on the left are amazing.  They've a short harvest season, but while you can get them they're the best apple out there.

It's true that the apple came from Khazikstan (at least according to Michael Pollan) but the New York State Agricultural Experiment, Cornell and scores of artisan orchardists really make this part of the state a hot spot for variety and expertise in all things apple.  There are so many great apples out there that will never withstand the storage and transportation required to get to the grocery store, and I was lucky to try many of them.  Preserving this variety, this bank of apple knowledge is not easy, nor is it free. The families that grow these apples need a market for them, an economic incentive to supplement their more altruistic motivations.  Using these less common varieties to make delicious artisanal cider adds a value to the apples that they would never get from the grocery store, and contributes the sustainability of small farms in a region threatened by resource extraction by providing an alternate way to use and value the landscape.