Hard Cider

by Barbara Stark-Nemon

  “Okay, so what I have might be a bit dated, but I’ll absolutely send it to you. I can’t believe you remember that I’ve done this before.”

  “Mom, really?”

  “Okay, right.” But it was true. Our fire had happened when Seth was nine weeks old. He didn’t remember sleeping in a dresser drawer for the first days until we replaced his bassinet and crib. He hadn’t seen the file system and the nine-month procedure to inventory our possessions and file an insurance claim.

  If he’d sensed the devastation the fire wrought on our physical and emotional lives, it had happened so early in his own experience that he’d hardly known anything different. Andrew, at three, and Alex, at nearly six, were a different story. They knew the trauma of lost possessions, the sight of the burned-out wreckage of their home, and the contrast of stressed parents having to cope with it all with how their lives had been pre-fire.

  “I’ll send a checklist and the suggestions for labels for file folders. Do you think they’ll want digital files or physical ones?”

  “These two might want the physical ones. Thanks, Momma.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll send them to you tomorrow. And you? Everything going okay there? We’re having a stellar winter afternoon here, and I just wanted to share.”

  “Yeah, work is going great, I’m playing some decent basketball. Life is good.”

  “Okay, well, I’m about to lose you—I’m in that hole between Leland and Northport. Love you, sweetie.”

  “Love you, Mom.”

  I drove through Northport and made my way toward the farmhouse, urging the Flex up the small hill from which I could see all the way to the stone pillars at the foot of our driveway. I noted movement in the middle distance. I let the car coast a few hundred feet, then pulled to one side. I recognized the dark curls peeking below the stocking hat of the girl walking up the road toward me. She hesitated.

  What is Julia Reiss doing pacing in front of my driveway? Is she the person I saw here two months ago?

  I returned the car to the road and drove slowly toward her. Julia stopped as I neared her and stood to the driver’s side of the car. I rolled down the window.

  “Hi, Julia.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Stone.” She stood uncertainly, keeping a ten-foot distance between us.

  “What’re you doing out this way?” I asked. “We don’t see many people walking on the road in the winter.”

  “Just walking.” Her mittened hand brushed the tip of her nose.

  “I guess we are practically neighbors.”

  Her silence gave me the feeling she wanted to say something more, but she didn’t.

  “Well, enjoy your walk.” I waited a moment longer, then said good-bye and drove through the stone pillars onto the long driveway. Should I have invited her in for a hot drink? That would have been the neighborly thing to do, but I was tired and didn’t really want to entertain. Also, Julia Reiss gave me an odd feeling. But I’d think about that another time. All I wanted now was a hot bath and a glass of wine.

  Chapter 7

  Spring arrived in the lurching, messy, but energizing manner of changing seasons in northern Michigan, and then abruptly turned into summer. Gardening, entertaining, and travel competed for my attention with plans for the hard cider business. Steven came to Northport for several weeks and filled the house with friends and family. The social contact gave him much pleasure, and he did his share of the work. Though I enjoyed connecting in vacation mode with those close to us, the amount of attention and constant face time with other people it required wore down my patience and goodwill. I used a regimen of running, swimming, and biking, along with a supply of scotch, to keep myself centered.

  Whenever I could, I haunted Charlie Aiken’s orchard—first in May, when the young trees burst into blossom, their sweet scent drawing bees to pollinate, and then as fruit set and the schedule of spraying and fertilizing marched into June and July. I helped out frequently, especially on the day after a vicious thunderstorm damaged orchards in a swath across the whole peninsula. The youth of the trees and our solid spring pruning kept the damage to a minimum, but Charles, James, and I spent a whole day trimming and clearing.

  In late July, Steven and I took a break from northern Michigan for a five-day sail in the Chesapeake Bay with Owen Moses. True to his promise, Owen treated Steven to his first sailing outside the Great Lakes, teaching him the finer points of ocean navigating on the Chesapeake and accounting for tides. We sailed, talked, laughed, and drank. As a bonus, Seth joined us for two of the days on the back end of a business trip to DC. Our youngest son had a knack for fitting into any social environment. Steven had someone to talk sports with, and Seth caught us up with his company’s progress in marketing solar energy. His genial comfort and ease with Owen, their common interest in the energy field, and Seth’s willingness to share in the heavy lifting of sails and anchors made him the perfect addition to our crew. As reluctant as I’d been to make the time for sailing, the magic of wind, sun, and water, intensified by the pleasure of time spent with dear ones, made for a great vacation.

  On his last evening, Seth and I relaxed on the foredeck of the stately thirty-six-foot sailboat, with Steven comfortably behind us at the helm and Owen smoking an after-dinner cigar on the rear settee of the cockpit. We sailed into the perfect evening, a ten-knot, steady breeze cooling the summer dusk. Seth handed me an icy beer, and after taking a long draw on his own, he said, “Dad says you’re getting more involved in the hard cider business. What’s happening with that? And is Alex really going to join in?”

  The setting sun shone orange on our faces as we headed back toward the marina. “I’m learning as much as I can about the whole process right now,” I said. “I’ve connected with a grower near Leland who’s planted a whole orchard of heritage cider apples, and I’m looking into the pressing and fermenting process to do as a business—at least to start.”

  “But why cider? I mean, I know you like growing things and you said when you bought the farmhouse property you were looking at doing some kind of farm business. But why this one?”

  I gazed at my tall, bronzed son, foot braced against the teak toe rail, his torso and curly head profiled against the wind-filled sail. He’d been gone from home for six years, and I realized now that he’d only ever heard periodic summaries of what occupied my life. What had Steven already said? Had he complained? Seth’s question seemed free of criticism or objection. It sounded as if he simply wanted to know. I gathered my thoughts to explain to this mostly sympathetic son of mine.

  “It started when I lived in England when I was just about your age.” It startled me to realize I’d been exactly Seth’s age when I spent a year on a teacher exchange program in London, coping with a marriage in the throes of rupturing—a marriage about which my children knew almost nothing. Don’t make this too long, Abbie. “I spent practically every weekend traveling around Great Britain, and that’s when I got my introduction to hard cider. There were as many cider makers in England as there are craft breweries now in the US, and I fell in love with it. Cider has a long and interesting history in this country, too. When water supplies weren’t safe for drinking, cider became the go-to beverage. In colonial times, it sometimes substituted for currency and was used for barter. You know, the whole story of Johnny Appleseed is based in truth. There’s this great book called The Botany of Desire that describes how—”

  “Okay, I get it,” Seth said. “You’re into apple cider. But last time I checked, you didn’t know how to work with a spreadsheet. Now you’re talking about starting a business?”

  I drew in a breath off the lovely breeze. “You have been talking to Dad! I know he thinks I don’t know anything about running a business, and it’s true I’ve never run one myself. But I worked in Grandpa’s business for many summers, and shy of being absolutely cutthroat, I actually think I have the head for it.” Maybe Seth could handle hearing his mother go deep. I would at least try to explain. “I’m looking forward to putting my energ
y into learning the skills I need to make a business that will fulfill a dream I’ve had for a long time. I know it’ll be hard, but I’m committed to at least thoroughly exploring the possibilities, and this is a time in my life where I have some more freedom. That’s why I want to pursue this project.”

  Seth looked at me for a long moment before smiling. “When you get into it, I can help with the nitty-gritty of the business plan.”

  I pulled my sunglasses down my nose, holding Seth’s eyes with my own. His expression was sincere, though a hint of amusement flickered in his deep brown eyes.

  “Thanks, sweetie. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “What about Alex?” Seth asked. “Is he really thinking about this move?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve asked him to be a technical advisor as I figure out if and how I want to establish a pressing and fermenting operation. You know he’s really good at analyzing and organizing systems and anything mechanical. That’s what I’m looking at right now. But Alex is in Iowa, and he has to decide if he wants to stay there or go somewhere else. Joining my business would only be a small part of a decision to come back to Michigan, and I think he’d only do it in conjunction with a PA job. I’d call it a distant possibility right now, but it is a possibility. Has he talked to you about it?”

  “Not really. He mentioned he’d visited over the winter, and Dad mentioned it also, so I just wondered what you had in mind.”

  “I’m really looking forward to this trip in the fall to New Hampshire. I’ll see some different operations that are well established and make really good cider. I’m hoping to have a better sense of what I want to do once I’ve seen all that.”

  Seth reached his nearly empty beer bottle toward me. “To Momma’s new adventure,” he toasted.

  We clinked bottles and I settled back with a smile to enjoy the last of the evening sail.

  The four summer weeks Steven had taken off work required him to put in intense hours at his firm in September and October, so once more, I found myself alone in the farmhouse after Labor Day. As the autumn progressed, the colors in northern Michigan turned neon yellow and orange, set off by the remaining green. As the time approached for my cider research trip east, I once again frequented Charlie Aiken’s orchard, just entering its full bearing years. The trees had fared well during this growing season, adding height, significant branching, and stouter trunks.

  Closer to my own house, I visited Kilcherman Orchard and got a look at their harvesting operation. Their mature, varied apple trees were a model of growing apples for cider production done right. Now I felt prepared to learn more firsthand about that production process.

  Before I left, I prepared the farmhouse and gardens for winter, shutting down hose bibs and the outdoor shower, clearing the gardens of spent plants, pulling in porch furniture and kayaks, and switching out rakes for snow shovels in the garden shed. I even made sure the snow plow attachment fit properly on the lawn tractor.

  Change-of-season chores always left me with a mixed feeling of accomplishment and poignancy, relinquishing the beauty and drama just past and anticipating what would soon come. When I left in a week’s time, Northport would still be in the full glory of autumn, but when I came back in the second week of November, I could easily return to a blinding snowstorm.

  My final errand took me to Dolls and More, for a purchase of sock yarn. Knitting socks works well on airplanes. Julia Reiss did not appear as I chatted with Sally. I’d seen little of Julia over the summer, as the Leytons had returned to their home, Julia had been gone to teach the rowing camp, and I hadn’t frequented the knit shop much during the busy outdoor season.

  I fingered the lovely lavender yarn I’d decided to purchase and looked over the flyer on the counter in front of me, which listed classes the shop would offer in the months to come. Julia was listed as the instructor for two of the knitting classes.

  “I see Julia is staying on,” I said to Sally.

  “Yep, she’s been a great asset here. The Leytons are heading back to Arizona after Thanksgiving, and she’ll be house sitting there again. Having her teach knitting has allowed me to expand into more doll making, and the classes are filling nicely.”

  “That’s great,” I said, and pried no further. I was curious about Julia but more eager to complete my tasks, so I paid for the yarn and left.

  Chapter 8

  The prayer I’d learned to say every night before going to sleep as a child, about the oneness of God and all beings, floated into my mind, along with gratitude that I could be pressed into the window seat of a small jet at takeoff. To this very day, taking off in an airplane signaled, to me, a momentary suspension between the end of exhausting preparation and extrication from the complexities of my life and the beginning of an adventure.

  I’d had a childhood full of air travel in small single-engine planes, piloted by my parents and a family friend. During those years I’d gained a visceral sense of the mechanical insecurities of aircraft and the physical alarm systems offered by the human body to remind us that flight is not what we were designed to do. The prayer had always seemed to me like a perfect acknowledgment of my transitional state on every level. I tuned into oneness.

  I settled back in my seat, ready to embrace this late-autumn trip to New Hampshire. I had hopes of recovering some sense of the self-determined life I wished for, which had vanished over the course of a hectic spring and summer.

  “How are you liking Seasons of Fire and Ice?” The deep voice penetrated the roar of the jet engines and my early attempts at mind-clearing meditation, another favorite airplane trick. I opened my eyes and looked at the man seated two seats over. He was good-looking, and as relaxed as a tall person can be in the undignified confines of a coach seat on a small jet. His eyes met mine and then glanced at the book in my lap.

  “Quite a bit, actually. Have you read it?”

  “I wrote it. Donald Lystra.” He offered his hand across the seat.

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” I felt a whoosh of excitement, synchronous with the ascending airplane. I had thought a lot about how children survive less-than-ideal circumstances, and I’d been deeply moved by the book. “You portray so well this kid trying to navigate with parents who love him but don’t really act in his best interest,” I said, leaning toward him. “The fact that he finds his way despite them is comforting.”

  My comment suddenly sounded too intimate, too revelatory of my chronic worry that despite our hard work and best intentions, Steven and I might have failed our children, particularly Alex, by not giving him all the tools he needed to thrive as an adult. I quickly changed the subject. “Where are you going? Are you giving a book talk?”

  “Nope. I have a reunion. What about you?”

  “I’m going to see apple orchards and hard cider making. Business trip.”

  “Are you making cider in Michigan?”

  I hesitated only a moment, and then said, “Yes, I am.” I felt bold.

  Donald Lystra and I parted company at the car rental desk in Boston. I was pleased to have handed him one of my sassy new business cards, though all it depicted was my contact information and a stylized image of an apple. It was a nice start to my first business trip.

  Driving out of Boston, my least favorite city to navigate by car, I wended my way over the black ribbons of road into the countryside beyond Medford and toward New Hampshire. The autumn had been warm, and though the cider-pressing season was well underway, the apple harvest was predicted to extend far into November.

  Blue sky radiated behind the shiny black of leafless trees on this brilliant day. I wanted to stop the car and tramp through the woods to a clearing, perhaps disturbed by resting deer during the night, or possibly, in another season, pristine with a new snowfall. Always, the image of high times in my twenties revisited me on beautiful days such as this one. In winter, we would ski into the woods, lean our poles into our buttocks, and turn our faces to the sun until they burned. Then we’d fall to our stomachs, chins res
ting on mittened hands, and look for snowflakes stacked across the surface before us, each a prism of light, scissor-cut by God into patterns that undulated in fantastic three-dimensional structures across the clearing. If we got cold, we simply got up and skied away into a rhythm that restored blood to every vital part of our young, strong bodies.

  The memory of the bliss, the heady promise of those days, triggered a pang of loss and sorrow at the confusion and heartbreak that came out of that time. Distance and altered state had rendered so much of what happened then unreliable in my memory, but I remembered the snow.

  The white stuff had not yet made an appearance in this part of New England, however, and I was grateful. My destination, a bed-and-breakfast in Antrim, lay near the center of New Hampshire. Staying there would put me an easy day’s drive from the orchards and cider mills I wanted to visit. I’d been invited to a cider pressing that would have several luminaries of the hard cider renaissance in attendance.

  I’d done my reading. Bob Walker’s Hard Cider Handbook was still the bedrock bible of the field, and my contact with Rick Loudon of Loudon Hill Orchards had led me to Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire and its wonderful section on the apple. Finally, I had plowed through a winemaking tutorial, so I had some vocabulary and knew a little bit about the chemistry of fermentation. I loved that I’d learned so much history, science, and even philosophy on the road to mastering hard cider production.

  The alchemy was what I really wanted to learn, and that I would try to do at the knee of David Waters, consummate cider maker at Orphan Lane Orchards in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

  Antrim shared with other towns in the area a mixture of well-preserved, centuries-old brick buildings and ramshackle cobbled structures of indeterminate age and construction. The farms surrounding the town had faded barns rooted into the earth with fieldstone foundations. Though not lush, the landscapes looked productive and well tended. Upcountry Inn turned out to be a rambling brick house set high off a road outside the town. It overlooked a horse pasture and was backed up onto a steep hill.