Bushels of fun

When you talk about enjoying the fruit of your labor, there’s possibly no group recently who has known what that feels like better than a group of farm neighbors in Grand River Township.

This group of friends and neighbors gathered on Larry Joe and Jean Vandewater’s farm in Grand River Township on a recent Sunday afternoon to harvest apples and press them to make fresh cider, enjoying a favorite fall tradition.

Apple after apple, bushel after bushel, drip after drip, gallon after gallon, there was a job for everyone in this process. Age and ability didn’t matter. There was something for everyone to do.

With adult supervision, children were up in the bucket of a front-end loader picking apples from the top of the tree. Someone else carried buckets of apples to the crusher. Another fed the crusher with apples. Someone else used a wooden paddle to smash the apples into the crusher to make sure it didn’t jam up. Another oversaw the press that makes the apple juice drip out. Another group bottled up the juice so everyone could take their share home.

This tradition goes back 56 years, as the first time Larry Joe made apple cider was with his wife’s family at Earlham.

For at least 40 years, a group of neighbors have come together to share in this tradition at Vandewater’s farm. The Glen Jones and Roger Rice families have been mainstays for the occasion, however many others have joined in through the years.

This year, about 15 people produced approximately 10-12 gallons of apple juice using the apples from one tree. There are two much younger, less mature trees that will one day produce apples that Larry Joe hopes will be enough for carrying on this neighborhood tradition long after he’s gone.

That first time Larry Joe made apple cider, it was with this same crusher he’s using today.

“Everything else has been rebuilt,” Larry Joe said. “You turned it by hand.”

That was until Larry Joe grabbed hold of it. It was his wife’s family’s setup. He asked his father-in-law if he could take it make some improvements to it, and he did. Now it’s electric-powered.

“I’ve had several people who have wanted to buy it from me. They told me that when I’m done with it to let them know, but I said that no, it’s going to stay in the neighborhood some place,” Larry Joe said. “I bet that’s over 100 years old. It works great, as you can see.”