Ham makes cider....

I think I have a protégé.

Over the past decade I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation for my cider. And of course in the last couple of years I have been helping people make their own through my little garage mill. Well this fall things really took off, and folks seem to be getting into the cider thing, especially my pal Ham Davis.

I first met Ham some three or so years ago, when he called up UVM looking for someone to prune the apple tree in his back yard. So one March day I went to his Burlington Hill Section house and whacked away at his twenty year-old Red Astrachan tree. Ham hung around as I pruned and picked my brain on all things apple, as many do. He mentioned several times that he was a writer, something I admit I brushed off a little bit. So when I was done, he asked what I would charge him. “A good story on the apple industry,” I told him.

So at least two good stories later (pretty good reads on the Darrows of Green Mountain Orchard and the orchard operations at Scott Farm) and many afternoons spent in that orchard and at the farm talking apples, grapes, and cider, Ham made it down my way this fall. But first he published a nice little piece on cider , mainly on Farnum Hill but with a decent bit of my operation in it.

So Ham came by the mill for a good long day this fall, and got a good dose of juice for himself. It’s his first turn at making cider, or even fermenting anything beyond some nasty brew back in his days in the service. I’m helping him along the way, answering any questions he has like the good cidermaker’s assistant I am.

I look forward to his cider, and mine, next spring. And I look forward to that apple/cider book I know he will write one day.