Landscapes – Cider With Maria

“The Architecture of Orchards” in Malus

September 30, 2021September 30, 2021Leave a comment

I’m very excited to have my article, “The Architecture of Orchards” in Issue 14 of Malus, a mighty little publication spreading ideas within the cider industry. You can read my article here. It is available on my publications page as well.

I’m especially delighted to see my article in print right next to one by James Crowden. I discovered James Crowden’s book Cider the Forgotten Miracle while I was working at Goren Farm in Devon in 2004 as a volunteer through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. I remember sitting in the barn near an ancient screw press and a barrel of cider while reading Crowden’s book. I was forever transformed. So I feel very honored to be included in a publication alongside him. Crowden opened my eyes to orchards as places of deep living, of stories, of tradition, and poetry.

Though I’ve thought about the material structure of orchards often, especially as regards the specific environmental benefits attributed to old standard orchard trees in Britain, I think there is much more to explore in thinking about them as architecture. The fields of vernacular architecture, landscape architecture, and cultural geography have tools for thinking about the intersection of natural and social worlds and how we construct the spaces we inhabit. I’m just at the beginning of this avenue of thought, and this article is an experiment. Tell me what you think!

If you haven’t read Malus, order yourself a copy or get a subscription right now! One of the wonderful things about this zine is its paper format, grounding us back in the world of material reading.

Fruit in the Forest

June 9, 2018February 4, 20211 Comment

87C31FD0-7596-4E5F-8DD6-AB99AEEF494D I’m Happy to post a link to my article in Voices, the Journal of the New York Folklore Society: http://www.nyfolklore.org/pubs/v43fw3-4-2017/10-fw2017-kennedy-1.html

The PDF of the article can also be downloaded here: Fruit In the Forest

Finger Lakes Fruit Heritage Events at Cider Week 2016

September 9, 2016Leave a comment

This post was written as a guest post for the Cider Week Finger Lakes blog as a prelude to Cider Week 2016. Please visit their site to find out about all the amazing events happening during Cider Week Finger Lakes.

: Old Orchard west of Watkins Glen, NY

I’ve been looking forward to Cider Week Finger Lakes 2016 all year, and here’s why: I’m hoping Cider Week 2016 will be an opportunity to learn more about the history of cider making and fruit growing from you, the public. The Finger Lakes Fruit Heritage Project is making its debut to ask what you know about the roles that orchards, cider, and fruit have played in our region’s heritage. I want to know about the old trees and orchards in your back yard, and the stories, anecdotes, experiences, and skills that are woven into the fabric of your fruit landscapes.

n1-1419 — Barrelling Apples – House, grain building, 1906, from the Verne Morton Collection: The History Center of Tompkins County

Cider Week has grown as our local agricultural entrepreneurs have rediscovered the craft of cider making and nurtured it in new and innovative directions. But cider was made in our region before, in the homes and on the farms of many people who settled the Finger Lakes region, travelling west from New England in search of better land. They planted fruit trees to supply their own families with food and beverage. And local people have made hard and sweet cider from them for generations. Keep your eyes peeled while you are driving through the countryside, and you might spot an old orchard you never noticed before.

eric-shatt-newell-farm-1-edit — Eric Shatt of Redbyrd Cider prunes and old orchard near Burdette, NY

Some of these old farm orchards still remain on our landscape today, and local cider makers, commercial and hobbyist, care for and use them, up to 150 years after they were originally planted.

What happened to these frontier farms? And the orchards that were an essential ingredient in their domestic economies? Some are still going, but many small hill farms that were unprofitable were abandoned during hard economic times. Some areas that were once farmed are now re-wilded as parks and reserves, like the Finger Lakes National Forest or the Connecticut Hill Wildlife Management Area. And some of them have long been sources for cider.

Home Cider Maker Steve Daughhetee near the remains of an enormous old orchard near his home west of Ithaca, NY. He believes these trees are Newtown Pippins.

ij-oct-26-19740001-crop — Photos from an article on States Cider Mill in the Ithaca Journal, October 26, 1974

Carl States, whose father owned the States Cider Mill in Odessa, remembers how local people went foraging in the abandoned farm orchards on Connecticut Hill when he was growing up in the 1960s. They brought the apples to be pressed at his father’s cider mill, which was still being operated by another family into the early 1990s, when it finally closed down when new requirements for pasteurization were passed into law.

“Most of the old timers would bring plenty of apples, more that what they needed, and then Dad would buy what was left over with, or they would just take it home with them in gallons or give it away. Apples were pretty plentiful then. A lot of people when I was a kid – all the old orchards were still in production on Connecticut hill, because all the old farms were abandoned in the depression, but the orchards were still there. So you could go up and get all the apples you wanted for free – just go up and pick them.” – Carl States

A few local cider makers who are at the heart of Cider Week today, including Ian and Jackie Merwin of Black Diamond Farm, remember taking their apples to be pressed at States Cider Mill. Places like these are now receding into memory, but it is here where the connection between our modern Cider Revival and the local heritage of cider can be made.

In addition to celebrating our amazing local cider businesses, I hope Cider Week continues to grow in exploring the history of cider deep in our region’s past, and nurtures the growing networks of DIY enthusiasts, home brewers, gardeners, and farmers who are renewing the spirit of cider making and cider drinking as a part of everyday life.

debbie-and-john-ball-2-edit-small — Debbie and John Ball in the old orchard outside Watkins Geln they have restored over the past 20 years. The orchard may be over 150 years old.

This Cider Week, I am hoping you can help me document our cider history through events hosted by the Finger Lakes Fruit Heritage Project. This project, an initiative of the Folk Arts program at The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes, will explore the fruit heritage of our region and highlight the agricultural and culinary practices that have molded our landscape, from apple orchards, to peaches, cherries, berries, and of course, grapes. I’m hoping to find more evidence about the history of local cider culture, in your stories and photographs, and in the apples growing in your back yard or on your farm.

Cider Week is a celebration of an agricultural and culinary craft brought back to life. Our cider future looks amazingly bright, and new orchards are springing up to supply it. But there’s still much to learn about the cider past, and how it’s shaped our local landscape, culture, and palate. I hope you will join the Finger Lakes Fruit Heritage Project events to share your knowledge and connect our local cider history with our cider future.

…

The Finger Lakes Fruit Heritage Project is hosting three Documentation Days and one Apple Identification Day during Cider Week, and you are invited to come share your fruit stories and learn about their apples.

Documentation Days at the Elmira Wisner Market (September 29, 10am-2pm) and the Montour Falls Harvest Festival (October 1, 12pm-7pm) are an opportunity to stop by the Finger Lakes Fruit Heritage listening booth and share stories, photographs or documents for our archive of fruit heritage. Tell us about your memories of making cider, apple butter, pie, wine, preserves. Describe pruning, parties, people who were the local masters of theses crafts. Your stories will help us see the larger picture of fruit and cider in the Finger Lakes.

The Apple Identification and Documentation Day at Reisinger’s Apple Country (October 8, 9am – 12noon) invites the public to bring apples to be identified by our pomologist panel, including Dr. Greg Peck of Cornell University and John Reynolds of Blackduck Cidery. If you’ve been wondering what that old tree at the back of the property is, now is your chance to find out! Bring 3-5 apples from each tree you would like to identify. You can then log your finds and deposit any stories you have at the listening booth. For more information on directions and what to expect, visit http://www.earts.org/finger-lakes-fruit-events

These events are a project of The Folk Arts Program at The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes in collaboration with partners at Reisinger’s Apple Country, Schuyler County Cornell Cooperative Extension, Cornell University Department of Horticulture, and Montour Falls Public Library. This project is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Pheasants and Pear Trees

February 3, 2016February 3, 20161 Comment

IMG_6362a The end of January is the close of pheasant season in England. The Beater’s Shoot marks the day at the end of the season when the paying guns are done, and the beaters take guns in hand. At this point in the season, one takes aim at the wily fowl who have managed to survive not only foxes and dogs, but the other guns who’ve been at it since November. These are the birds who’ve managed to keep their feet on the ground, or who’ve won the lottery of the air.

I’ll tell you right now, that I’m a terrible shot, and my fumbling attempts with a firearm led me to the conclusion that I am left-eye dominant and right-handed – a physiology at cross purposes for the sport. But I preferred the work of the beater to the sport of the guns anyway. My eyes were better suited to sweeping the scenes of the hedgerows, searching out the silhouettes of trees. Old perry trees. The lone oaks settling in their centuries-old seats on the hills. The hawthorns and the blackthorns dividing the fields.

In England, one of my best friends was a gamekeeper for a small shoot on a local farm, and his sweetheart had an eye for good dogs and taste for good gin. Many of their circle were hunters and farmers and gamekeepers. Even my neighbour next door was gamekeeper. My social circle was the working edge of English Country Life, peppered with people in other professions: occupational therapists, farmers, conservationists, blacksmiths, repairmen, EMTs, and caterers. On the weekends, the working folks would gather for the working man’s portion of the country shoot: we were the beaters.

The beaters stalk the birds, flushing them slowly from their hiding places in the thickets and streams, along the hedgerows, chasing them carefully toward the edge of a hill, where they finally fly up and out, into the air where the gentlemen with guns are waiting to take aim.

On reflection it seems a bit unfair, chasing these dull birds to the edge of their small range of comfort, where they have fed and roosted all summer and fall, towards a trap of forced flight before a firing squad. But crawling through the hedges, and along the fields, the immediate feeling is a quiet rush, the thrill of stalking the quarry. The successful shot is more than the work of a trigger finger and an eye. It is the quick targeting, the end capture of a long slow ramble begun by the side of the road. Jumping out of an old truck, sweeping the landscape of its feathers, with a long brushstroke traced by wellington boots on the muddy ground, the beaters flush the countryside towards the moment of the shot. And it is almost an afterthought in the air to hours of feet in the mud, wading through acres of wheat and feed corn.

By the end of the season, I knew the paths well. We traced a pattern each time, along a series of field boundaries, scrambling across streams, quiet, so as not to scare the birds to an early flight. You must keep them scuttling across the ground till the last moment. And each time I retraced the path I loved it more. My favourite hedge was one studded with old perry trees. Who knows how old they were? Or if anyone had ever collected their pears? Had they been planted? Had they sprung up as wildings in the hedge? Who could say? I loved encountering trees this way, as signposts on my path, familiar sentinels in the fields, yet lonely, somewhat desolate in the midst of a wild undergrowth of young hedge. We were shooing the pheasants, birds we could rarely see until they flew, through their daily habitat among the shrubs and trees toward a brief and panicked vault towards the sky.

At the end of the first drive, we would end up on the edge of the Dabinette orchard and walk to my friend’s family home for a lunch of pork sandwiches and cider, and set out again for the afternoon. And at the end, tired, we’d walk the last stretch to the pub.

The memory is three years old now. But what I think what a pleasure it would be walk out again with my friends, stand on the headland overlooking the Wye Valley, with Ross below us, May Hill in the distance, and my friends ready with flasks full of home-made sloe gin tucked in tweed pockets to keep us warm from the inside.

We would wave our hands in the air to shoo the birds towards the guns if they took fright and flew. But from the top of that high hill, the escaping birds could see, like us, the Shire below, peaceful, settled into the grey quiet of winter.

I’m not so different from the pheasant. Who wouldn’t want to keep their heads under these quiet hedges? The trick is to keep your feet firmly planted on the ground.

Days later, after the beater’s shoot at the end of the season, I was in the air too, on a plane, flushed out of my beloved hedgerows by threats slowly pursuing me: the end of a work visa, faltering finances, the duty to return home to tend unfinished business.

It’s not the final shot that hurts – no – it’s the grief of letting your feet leave the textured, familiar ground of a beloved place.

Will the old pear trees still be there when I return, the oaks? They are long-lived trees, and I hope they will still be there to greet me, landing from another life, another textured ground in Ithaca, across the sea.

…

Pheasant Shoot

Written 2012,
For Toby, Kate, Howie, Ed, Mel, Laura, Will, Mark, Ru, St.John, and the rest of the Rascals

Brrhhhrrrhh, the roll of the tongue, Brrrhhhrrhh,
A rough coo tumbling into the cover of wheat
Where the birds barely rustle.

The roll of a tongue and the rasp of a stick on the wheat,
The rhythmic beat, and the rough-shod treading of feet
over the wet pasture, over the stile.

Beyond, in the next field over, the unsettled bleat
of a flock of Shropshires retreating from the din of the guns,
to the far side of their pasture.

And the rolling hum of the beaters,
driving their wild feathered flock
towards one last flight for the guns,

From the hedge studded with old perry trees,
From the swollen stream and the bramble-curtained low ravine,
From the pig’s wood, from the maize, from the corn,

Till finally, their long tails trailing them, they fly
Over the guns, and the shots pulse out,
a patter of lead falls, a tuft of feather rips out from a breast

The wings spread out – the bird spirals down
to the crest of a hill,
Where a spaniel gallops, retrieves, the kill.

A whistle blows. The keeper calls the beaters in
To the pub, where they warm themselves
With ale or gin, counting the braces of birds they’ve tied and hung.

We rattle home in an old car that spills Van Morrison out the windows,
softening the curves the lanes.
The pheasants left to grey dim light begin to roost,
climb the darkening air to their nightly rest.

Cider Salon, NYC

November 29, 2015November 30, 2015Leave a comment

When you need to advance beyond the next creative horizon; when you have an idea buzzing around in your mind that needs to be refracted through the lens of a different constellation of thoughts; or when you are tired, tired, worn, and barely able to think in the middle of a long slog of seasonal work – what do you do? Seek out your colleagues. Cider makers are a sociable lot, though often isolated by the demands of their individual businesses. So it is not surprising when they get together, but it is delightful. I’ve been fortunate to peek in on a couple of events recently that have opportuned some cider-maker mind-melding. In this post, I’ll talk about a recent Cider Salon, and in a following post, I’ll write about a tasting with Finger Lakes Cider godfather Peter Hoover.

The Cider Salon at Jimmy’s Number 43 during Cider Week New York was an intimate afternoon and evening of talks and tastings with a variety of cider makers, authors, and orchardists from New York, New England, and even a few invited visitors from the Northwest. Rubbing elbows with fellow cider people was unavoidable, as the space was small, and the audience enthusiastic. Many a small or aspiring cider maker was there, and the atmosphere was sparking with the individual excitements of cider enthusiasts, tempered by the wonderful opportunity to see and participate in discussions with and between the more established commercial cider makers. This is what makes a salon such a great format – the informal opportunities to chat with colleagues and hear from people whose work your admire. But also the opportunity to get beyond the sales pitch and talk creatively, intellectually, about the craft with those who know it and love it with equal fervor.

Shepherded by cider writer Eric West and organized and hosted by proprietor Jimmy Carbone and Gay Howard of United States of Cider, the day brought commercial cider makers new and old together. Jacob Lagoner introduced his Embark Craft Ciders from the shores of Lake Ontario, and Jahil Maplestone of Descendant Cider in the heart of the City paired up with Murrays for some cheese tasting. Highlights for me were the sparring contest between Steve Wood of Farnum Hill and Kevin Zielinski of EZ Orchards on the challenges and triumphs of orcharding and cider making in the Northeast versus the Northwest. Reverend Nat himself from Reverend Nat’s Hard Cider also made it out from the West Coast to wow the East Coast apple purists with the hopped, fruited, magicked and suited ciders he has been so successful with on his side of the country.

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Andy Brennan of Aaron Burr Cider and Steve Selin of South Hill Cider talked wild apples, a conversation that was continued with Rowan Jacobsen, author of Apples of Uncommon Character and recently an article “The Feral Cider Society”, during an event at Wassail the following day. Every so often I get author envy when I see someone write a book or an article I wish I had written. Rowan Jacobsen wins the envy prize this month, but he kindly signed my copy of his book, so thank you sir, for upping the cider writing game!

All cider makers bring something different to the craft, and Steve, Andy, and Rowan bring a particularly artistic viewpoint. Rowan is a writer; Andy is a painter and draftsman; Steve is a musician and luthier. I suspect that they think about cider, apples, and trees in ways that mirror their other endeavors, reorienting materials, experimenting within the structures of a form, and thus, reorganizing how we experience and understand the the genre of cider itself. They imagine cider in ways that take us outside the orchard, beyond the restaurant pairing menu, and into the unique genetic, environmental landscape that has created the feral apples of the Northeastern United States.

Their approach reshapes not only how we experience the taste of cider made by wild fruit, but how we think about the landscape these feral trees inhabit. The landscape history of our Northeastern region, one of deforestation, cultivation, and reforestation, is one that most of us are unaware of. Trees are everywhere, right? They make us see the trees in our wooded regions differently. Through their ciders, though, the palette of the forest, and its depth of history becomes more nuanced. Steve, Andy, and Rowan may be the most recognized voices on the art of wild, or feral fruit, but there are certainly many others out in the woods, who know their trees, and who are exploring the evolving character of the fruitful American woodland.

And it’s not just the forests upstate that are being explored and turned inside out. Even Wassail’s cider director Dan Pucci chimed in to talk about foraging in the wilds of New York City, endeavors chronicled in this Vice article.

This is what excites me most about cider, the approaches that trace not just a taste, or an aroma, but that reorient our whole relationship to landscape through the appreciation of the fruit, the tree, the land, and the people who interact with it over time.

My echo of this Cider Salon on the bare pages of a blog can in no way reproduce the buzz of the crowd or the flow of conversation. Which is why I hope there are more cider salons in the future. The small scale, non-commercial cider makers who peppered the audience certainly can’t make it to NYC often, and Jimmy’s place was barely big enough to hold this inaugural group. Cider Salons, go forth a multiply. It would be lovely to see more opportunities to talk about the art, history, and culture of the craft!

Blossom Time in New York

May 17, 20152 Comments

The blossoms have come and are now almost gone here in upstate New York. Since I last posted, nigh eons ago, I’ve relocated from Indiana to the Finger Lakes region of New York to start a new job. It’s been a big change, but an exciting one, with so much more cider now close at hand!

I said a dewy-eyed farewell to Oliver Winery and the Creekbend Vineyard in Indiana, where I had the privilege to work alongside some fantastic people, learn a little bit about viticulture, and become familiar with the dips and crests of the rolling landscape of the vineyard, and the personalities of each field. There were wet spots filled with mosquitos, the acres of Chambourcin and Chardonel vines devastated by the polar vortex, the finicky short rows of pampered vinifera, the acres and acres of hardy Catawba, and the bowl of land left over to wildflowers that drained into a stream leading into the woods.

Here in New York, I have much to learn about the local climate and its effect on apple and grape cultivation. The cider industry is young and exciting, with the Finger Lakes Cider House opening just last week. It seems like I learn about a new cidery every time I turn my head.

I look forward to turning this blog in the direction of more sustained writing about fruit, fermentation, and landscape in my new home. And I’m not alone! I’ve been delighted to be warmly welcomed by Meredith, author of the blog Along Came A Cider. And I have recently discovered the the Finger Lakes Apple Tree Project by Steve Selin, maker of South Hill Cider. Cider people are so friendly and welcoming! I’m also really excited about Cider Week Finger Lakes, and I hope to nurture some partnerships in the cider, arts, and heritage communities through my work. There are so many people to meet, ciders to drink, and projects to plan. I am totally the wide eyed new girl on the block, gazing in awe at all the bounty of cider projects around me.

Though New York City is still a good 5 hour drive from these westerly regions of the Great State of New York, I recently managed a trip down thataway and made the pilgrimage to Wassail, the new swanky cider bar in the Lower East Side. That deserves a post all its own, so I’ll return to it later.

But along the way, I ran ( maybe ambled is better) the Hard Cider Run at Warwick Valley Winery, home of Docs Draft Cider, and went for a drive up and down the Hudson Valley, where the orchards were blossoming their hearts out. It’s that ephemeral moment of spring, that you only get to see briefly before the petals fall and the fruit starts to swell in the long balmy stretch of summer ahead. Cideries take note – HUNDREDS of people signed up to run this 5k through the blossom, many of whom may have never thought about cider much before and were clearly just out for a nice day in the country. It was a little chaotic, but everyone seemed to have a great time.

The Blossom Time is the also the time for tree hunters, and I’ve been keeping my eye out as I travel around the highways and byways of my new home territory. I spotted these two ancient orchards during the winter by roadsides in Schuyler County, near the village of Burdette, and Chemung County, near the town of Horseheads. I happened to be driving by them again this weekend, and stopped to see if they had any blossom. They did! But barely. It is easy to see fruit trees young and old blooming near houses, cared for by homeowners. But sprawling old orchards like these are a rare find, as far as I can see, in this part of New York. I still don’t know who owns them, or why they have survived, or what fruit lies in wait there.

There are plenty of old barns slowly rotting away in the countryside here too, as these photos below attest. And plenty of old farmhouses, that look back towards a different farm economy, one that supported relative wealth and vibrant communities in places that are now the back of beyond. Who lived in these enormous old vacant houses? And why do they lie abandoned now? Who planted these old orchards, and what kind of farms are they remnants of?

The new cider industry here is clearly booming. I can’t wait to learn more about the landscapes that supported apples of old, and the new orchards, like these ones at the Good Life Farm, home of the Finger Lakes Cider House, that are rising slowly from the earth to meet a new market, and reshape the land with it.

Mistletoe

December 19, 2014December 19, 2022Leave a comment

During my research in England, I wrote some fieldnote observations (reposted below) about my encounters with mistletoe, and I recently got to revisit them in a conversation with Annie Corrigan on WFIU Radio’s Earth Eats Program. If you are interested in further information on mistletoe, please visit pages by Jonathan Briggs, whose work has brought the botany, conservation, and social history of mistletoe out of the orchard and into the 21rst century: Mistletoe Matters and Jonathan’s Mistletoe Diary.

December 8, 2011. Fieldnotes. It is a windy, rainy day outside, and at 3:30pm, I definitely need the lights on inside. I am perched on my little snug chair next to the woodstove. The darkness of winter here has definitely been one of the hardest things for me to deal with, and if left to natural devices, I would probably take a cue from the other mammals about and go into hibernation for the next few months. The days are definitely shorter here than back at home, but I think part of it is the fact that my fieldwork takes me outside a lot. Instead of being compelled to get to work in a lighted building for eight hours, I find the waxing and waning of the sun’s light has a much greater influence on my experience of the working day.

During this dark period, another product of the orchard has preoccupied me for the past several weeks, and that is mistletoe. I only learned that mistletoe favored growing on apple trees, and particularly in the south-west midlands of Britain, in October, when my wwoof host at the Hatch pointed it out to me as we were harvesting apples and pears from the orchard. He mentioned that he used to sell the mistletoe, but the comment escaped my notice until someone mentioned the Tenbury Wells Mistletoe Auction to me some time later.

The town of Tenbury Wells is located just on the borders of three counties – Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Worcestershire. And allegedly, these mistletoe auctions have been going on for the past 150 years, though they were threatened with closure recently when the cattle market, where they were held, closed. In an effort to help save the auctions and retain one of the town’s claims to fame, some folks cooked up the Mistletoe Festival, complete with a mistletoe queen, a Druid procession, and various other Christmas activities. You can read more about it on their website here.

While the festival itself is, of course, interesting as a consciously invented tradition, I was actually more interested in the relationship of the mistletoe sales to the issues of orchard management. It turns out that mistletoe thrives in old and traditionally managed orchards. I sent off some inquiring emails to the estate agents who run the auction, and received a reply from a local farmer who was happy to talk to me.

Armed with my photographic equipment, I set off to the first auction, which happened on Nov 29th. Turns out I wasn’t the only one with a camera. There were LOADS of camera-toting people there, from amateur on-lookers to highly professional rigs. One guy, who turned out to be a floral photographer, even had his assistant/model, all dolled up in ‘authentic’ looking pristine wellies and beautifully matching fuzzy lavender hat and gloves, posing as if she was inspecting and buying the mistletoe. The place was just dripping in nostalgia, or at least that is what all the photographers seemed to be framing in their cameras.

The actual business of the auction, though, seemed to go on without much notice of the photographers and onlookers. And it was really business. The auctioneer, with hs portable loudspeaker and cadre of assistants keeping track of the lot numbers, bidders, and prices, moved up and down the rows of wreaths, holly, and mistletoe, offering a starting price, sometimes with a comment to the quality (“look at the berries on that”) and taking the bids from the small crowd of what seemed to be seasoned veteran buyers. People in the middle of conducting business transactions aren’t terribly interested in being interviewed, so this situation required a lot more courage, so to speak, on my part, going up to people and asking if they would answer a few questions in between hauling their green purchases to their vans, lorries, and cars.

The guys pictured here had driven all the way from Cork, Ireland and slept in their van and were filling it to the brim for the trip home, where they would sell it through their Christmas tree yard. They were very friendly. Many of the buyers were from florists and garden centers, along with some other small scale Christmas tree vendors. My best tactic for talking to people seemed to be to stand near the bidding action, and turn to the person next to me to ask if they were selling or buying, and launch into an uninvited conversation. The next week, when I returned for the next auction, I came armed with a printed survey in self-addressed, stamped, envelopes, which I could simply give to people to complete and mail back to me at their leisure. Even so, it was hard to get it into a lot of hands. I didn’t meet any sellers, but on my second visit, I walked up and down the rows of mistletoe and holly writing down the names and addresses of the sellers written on the tags of each lot. Not all had addresses, but it might be a start for contacting sellers and talking to them later.

One group of people whom I have not had the courage to talk to yet are the gypsies. Along with the farmers who bring mistletoe from their orchards to sell, there are groups of gypsies who gather it from farmers’ orchards and sell it on at the auction. I did walk up to two men who seemed to be lingering by the side of the auction yard among groups of people whom I took to be gypsies. As I tried to start a conversation with them, their first question was if I was a journalist, after which, one of them ranted for a bit about how it wasn’t all christmas cheer and roses harvesting the mistletoe. It was hard work, at which point, he pulled up his sweater to show me an enormous scar running across his side and up to his ribcage. I attempted to banter for a bit, and they seemed to warm up to me, but I decided not to push questions. Maybe later.

I did go visit one farm, Eastham Court Farm near Tenbury Wells. I was greeted, to my surprise, by a 22-year old guy, recently graduated from an engineering degree, who had moved home to his parents’ farm. And while he was sorting out what to do next, he had taken their mistletoe business in hand and set up an online direct-sales business, bypassing the auction. You can find his website here. He emphasized the need for farmers to change and adapt to new ways of doing business. He took me out into their orchards: organic, 60-year old orchards which he seemed to think were in definite decline. Even though they were lovely places to be, with their widely spaced, large, old trees, he didn’t think orchards like this would last much longer, as newer orchards with more closely-spaced, smaller trees were replanted. And there was the mistletoe, hanging in lacy green orbs from the branches of the trees, sometimes almost overwhelming them. The farmers have to cut it back every year, or it will sap the energy of the tree and decrease the apple harvest, if not kill it slowly outright. Piles of mistletoe lay on the ground, much of it to be discarded, as there was just too much even to sell.

Photos from Eastham Court Farm, near Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, home of http://www.kissmemistletoe.co.uk

Cider on the Prairie

August 10, 2014September 28, 2014Leave a comment

I decided to pay a visit to a place very close to my heart: Conner Prairie Living History Museum, where I worked for about five summers during college. I had not been back in many years, and I was excited to find, in addition to familiar memories of my first experiences in orchards, some pleasing new connections to cider and wine.

Just north of Indianapolis, this museum has several recreated historic areas depicting the development of European settlement in the state of Indiana during the nineteenth century: an 1816 Lenape Trading Post, an 1836 Prairietown village and a Civil War era farm. I spent a lot of time here wearing excessive amounts of clothing while doing period cooking over an open fire, and it was here that I first fell in love with historic agriculture and cookery.

Though there are many historic and reconstructed buildings in the museum, the only building original to the property is the 1820s farmhouse built by William Conner – fur trader, settler, farmer, and entrepreneur – which overlooks an agriculturally advantageous horse-shoe bend of the White River.

I’ve always loved houses of this period: the high ceilings and large windows let in so much light and air. Even on a hot day, they are flung open, allowing the outdoor and indoor worlds to co-mingle. The kitchens, based around a hearth and a worktable, have room to move in – theatres in the round of culinary action, based around moving bodies instead of appliances. And there is nothing so alive as an open hearth, where cooking is a matter of well-honed instinct for the smell of baking (or burning) bread, and a sense of temperature according to the skin, rather than a thermometer.

One of the things I loved about working there was the effect it had on the senses. There are many criticisms to be levelled at living history museums – that they tidy up the past into a theme-park fantasy, focus too much on white rural settler narratives at the expense of other American experiences, and create awkward scenarios for visitor interaction. But I still believe in their fundamental purpose of introducing history as something that can be partially experienced through the body. The trick is in moving the experience beyond simple fantasy to sympathy, where one’s bodily, sensory grasp of the material conditions of the past inspires a more personal interior understanding of another individual’s possible experience. To walk in another person’s shoes, to cook at another person’s hearth. To press apples the way it was done in 1836. Sympathy is, I believe, a profoundly democratic aspiration, and a morally and socially complex approach to history.

Spending a good portion of the day working in an un-electrified environment with no running water slows down the pace of life immensely. Sometimes, during a few slow hours, I would just watch shadows creep across the floor. It profoundly changed my sense of light, colour, and visual perception.

Occasionaly on my lunch break, I walked through the old neglected orchard on the back end of the property, in an area that was at that time off-limits to visitors. The apples, a golden yellow variety named “Early Transparent” which ripen in July, would fall to the ground and begin to rot, making the humid air thick with the perfume of pulp fermenting in the searing Indiana sun. Since the museum’s expansions in recent years, it has been cleaned up, the old decrepit trees removed. Currently, only a few remain, but even these produce enough for the possibility of cider-making.

I played a number of characters in the historic village, each with varying degrees of museum-sanctioned, historically accurate biography, and a lot of material improvised during the everyday interactions of museum staff, where the lines between history, theatre, and everyday life were sometimes ephemeral and shifting. I often mused on the possible inner lives of the fictional characters I portrayed in short poems, including this one , about a young woman living on a new farm at the edge of the wilderness, dreaming of an orchard in the more settled, cultivated life she had left back east. Settlers on the frontier are usually portrayed as looking confidently forward, into the wilderness in the American Myth. But so much of the transformation of that frontier was created by looking backwards. The space on the zone of transformation, between forest and orchard, must have been fraught with excitement, regret, and trepidation.

I was excited to find that one of my old co-workers, who had started as a teen volunteer when I worked there, was now a full time staff member who seems to be influencing things in favour or historic beer, wine, and cider making! Witness this project in progress at the carpentry shop, a cider press apparently constructed after a historic design. I’ve not seen one like this before, so I am keen to find out more about it.

She had success last year with elderberry wine. The berries on the bush outside the barn look promising, and bottles labeled “Elderberry” sit temptingly on the shelves of the tavern room in the reconstructed Golden Eagle Inn in the 1836 village.

I hope to be able to report back about the progress of cider making at Conner Prairie later in the fall, especially regarding the historical research they are drawing on to portray cider making in nineteenth century Indiana.

Elderflower Detour

July 30, 2014July 30, 20141 Comment

June in Indiana is the time to gather Elderflowers, though almost no one does, except me. Some folks here are familiar with the elderberry as an edible fruit for pies or cordials, but floral tastes are not something that seem to be part of the culinary canon here in the midwest. I certainly had never heard of elderflower at all until my first trip to England in 2004, and then it was a revelation.

The task that still haunts my memory most vividly from Old Chapel Farm near Llanidloes, Wales, where I spent a month as a WWOOF volunteer and have returned to many times since, was gathering elderflowers and making wine. Home wine-making, canning, or preserving were not part of my suburban childhood. My mother valiantly tried to introduce us to gardening on our summer holidays, but it never stuck. I came to love it much later, in my own time. But she did always lovingly tend the flowers by the front door and kept houseplants thriving through the winter. Green things always seemed natural companions in our home, more like silent green pets than objects of toil.

At Old Chapel, we trudged up and down the valley in search of elderflower bushes. They always seemed to love ditches and stream beds best, and you would find yourself reaching out precariously over some muddy bank to pick the large lacy flower heads.

Here in Indiana, I had no idea when elderflower would bloom in our much warmer climate, nor even if and where it might grow here. I was lucky to get advice from a few of my local foraging friends. It turns out the elderflower still blooms in June. And it still loves ditches and roadsides and fence lines. I found one bush just down an alley near my house. A friend took me for a drive along the winding hilly roads north of Bloomington, where we spotted several enormous bushes. The jury is still out on whether these will produce as fragrant a flavour as the elder in England. I believe these bushes are a slightly different species. The flower heads are enormous, and the fragrance dimmer.

The English love affair with Elderflower is something I wish I could translate here. In the brewery room of the barn at Old Chapel, dozens of glass demi-johns filled with home-made wine lined the walls. Plum, Elderflower, Apple, Rice Wine, Tea Wine. The air was alive with the smell of yeast. A honey extractor stood on the back table. Empty jars overflowed from a bin, waiting to be filled with jams and preserves. To me, this room was the most magical room I could imagine. I would sneak inside just to look at the rows bottles refracting sunlight through the muted jewel tones of the fermenting liquids.

For the cider maker, as one of my friends described it, making elderflower wine is a good distraction in the early summer when next season’s cider making is still several months away. This was certainly true for my friends in the Marches Cyder Circle, in North Herefordshire, who invited me to an Elderflower Champagne party, where everyone brought their fizzy versions of the brew. Prizes went to both the best tasting drink and the bottle that shot the cork highest in the air.

I don’t recall ever seeing a commercial elderflower wine. Elderflower pressé, cordial, jam, etc, was of course available everywhere in Britain. But the wine seemed to be something reserved for home-making. I’ve often wondered why? Is it too difficult to mass-produce? Is it unpalatable for all but the staunch traditionalist?

In June 2012, while I was living in Shropshire and Herefordshire, I met Keith Pybus, a local walker, maker of jams and preserves, and an enthusiast of the elderflower’s culinary history. He helped host an elderflower event with Grow, Cook, Share, a local gardening and cooking initiative. Among the delights was an elderflower cheesecake or Sambocade, adapted from a medieval recipe.

To eat a flower always seems rather strange and indulgent – feasting on delicate aromas and textures that have not had the chance to fill out into the juicy, satisfying substantiality of fruit. To eat a flower is almost to consume an idea of fruit, the logic of its imminent architecture in the flower’s shape, the soul of the plant hovering in its fragrance. I always tend to see the world through hyper-poetic glasses, but isn’t eating a flower savage and elegant all at once? And to drink a flower, to make it into wine: that borders on the magical.

Below is a photograph of the recipe I copied into my journal in June of 2004 at Old Chapel Farm, on which I based my recipe this year, 10 years later. It’s a little off, but a good record of my personal history of elderflower and a fair starting point for a recipe. 5 lbs of sugar should really be 5 kilos (roughly 12 lbs). This time, I used more flower heads to ensure the floral taste, as well as a splosh of black tea for tannin. And I used a commercial wine yeast suited to delicate floral flavors. After fermenting in the brew bucket for about two weeks, I transferred it to the glass carboy with an airlock, and I can report that it is still bubbling slowly several weeks later. Next year, in June, we’ll hopefully be drinking it!

Relegated to the Burn Pile

June 11, 2014August 11, 20143 Comments

I’ve been neglecting the blog lately due to some heavy dissertation writing, rewriting, and career hand-wringing. Many paragraphs have been relegated to the burn pile. Grafting new ideas onto old roots. Trying not to get swept away by some new theoretical position.

Cider is always on the mind, though, and I’ve been in on several conversations lately that hinge on the market capacity for craft breweries, cider, wine, and spirits. Speaking with some of my marketing friends, it sounds like keeping on top of the next big thing is increasingly fast-paced: new social media platforms to populate, new trends to mastermind. One day, it’s cider, the next, it’s craft distilleries. A colleague of mine with a more optimistic attitude is hoping to open another brewery here and is pretty sure that there’s more than enough space in the market, while another friend is convinced cider is the way to go now. And still a third thinks both are way behind the curve and the craft distilleries are the wave of the future.

It makes me wonder how fast trends are coming and going, and what incentive there is to get into the very long-term and labor intensive work of growing apples and grapes? I muck in on a part time basis at the vineyard here, and the losses from this past winter’s brutal cold are forcing the vineyard crew to pull some pretty long days dealing with the vine maintenance and replanting. It makes conversation about the ever-changing winds of market trends feel positively inane when you are cutting down vines in the early summer and contemplating the months of tying, training, shoot selection, and the years of re-growth before you get another harvest.

For me, the long term patience, and the care and cultivation that go into orchards and vineyards are what contribute to the magic of cider and wine. The importance and pleasure of the drink is not just in the taste – though that is certainly important – but in the mind, in the story of the place where that grape or that apple grew. The patience of wine and cider is something that appeals to my own personal sense of just being tuned into time and place and labor, where human stories and natural environments collide in agricultural artistry.

I see a parallel with organic or sustainably grown food, and my distaste for marketing that promotes it as a consumer choice for personal health or better taste. The importance of that enterprise is not increased nutrition, health, or taste – though of course these things are important too – but the knowledge that the food was grown and cared for in a way that was sensitive to the long term health of the environment and the economic and social sustainability of local communities engaged in this work.

I know good marketing is important for the success of a business and its ability to devote itself to the long-term care of its resources (trees, workers, community, as well as dollars). I still think that cider, in order to be viable in the long term, and not just another market trend or rising drinks category, needs to communicate its identity in a way that emphasizes its heritage, its sustainable environmental impact, and its connection to agricultural families, businesses, and communities. In order to do justice to the years of cultivation and care it takes to grow an apple, we need a message that can transcend the marketed, trending moment and put roots down for years to come. I’m more convinced than ever, after dragging dead grape vines to a burn pile and planting tender new ones for the future, that we need to be able to communicate the heritage, labor, and patience of cider orchards in the same way that the wine industry does for its vineyards and grapes.

Well, after that little missive, I’ve got to get back to the dissertation and the dirt.