Harvest tribes: pressing Northern Michigan’s apple cider

By Nadine Gilmer
Sun contributor

Family by family, we gather on a Saturday in early October in the leaf-strewn front yard of local poet and Interlochen Arts Academy teachers, Anne-Marie Oomen and David Early. Around an old apple press we leave gifts of freshly picked wild apples like offerings to the God of harvest.

“This press was given to us by our friends, Claudia Schmidt and Bill Palladino, when they moved off Beaver Island,” says Early as he dons leather gloves and steps up to the crank.

“On the condition that we use it as a community event,” ads Oomen, who carries an armful of empty bottles and small paper cups to the picnic table.

It’s hard to imagine apple cider making not being a community event. Aside from the sweet promise of fresh apple cider, this is a labor-intensive job. One person washes the apples while a couple of other cider-makers set up the press. Then one person holds the bowl at the end of the spout to make sure none of the juice is wasted. One feeds handfuls of apples into the machine while a sturdy volunteer turns the crank.

The apples are crushed into smaller bits and dropped into an open wooden barrel until it is full. The barrel is then slid down the ramp to the front end of the press, and a wooden circle that fits perfectly inside the barrel is pressed down by another crank to squeeze all the juice out of the apple chunks. The juice flows out the bottom of the barrel and funnels into a bowl held at ground level.

“Yup,” says Early, “the press was at the Wheelers’ house for a while and then somehow it migrated back here.” He begins cranking away again as he remembers one year when he and Oomen were picking apples at Greystone Gardens near Empire. The press had ridden with them in the back of their truck, and when the farmer saw it he stopped and asked, “Is that the press from Beaver Island?” Early was unsure when the press and this apple farmer become acquaintances, nor are they sure of its birthplace, but they do know that the handed-down, well-traveled press has maintained its mission, to create community, as well as tasty cider.

The cider is finally ladled into paper cups and we all give it a taste-test. The large crowd of chattering families grows quiet as we all take a curious sip of the juice. After the consensus of “yumm”s circulates throughout the crowd, the crank is started back up for the next batch.

Two other volunteers are recruited to strain and funnel the juice into jugs and bottles to take home. Others are busy in the kitchen, preparing the post-cider-making feast to celebrate the birthdays of Oomen and local professor of architecture Robin Johnson.

“We’ve been doing this almost every year for about 12 years now,” says Oomen in a blur of straining, pouring and attending to the numerous guests who have come to celebrate her birthday. Last year, the poor crop yield prevented them from making cider. “This year is special,” she says, “because we had such a good harvest. Especially the wild apples, which is great because they’re not sprayed.”

Oomen allows herself a moment to pause and think about our little harvest gathering, her writer’s gears cranking like the press behind her. “When we come together,” she offers, “it’s not just taking a harvest—it’s also honoring the harvest by being in the presence of the harvest—gathering outside. It’s not something that we do inside, away from where the harvest took place. It’s a gesture of hope, and optimism, and sharing that we drink it right away, and we have to drink it right away because it’s not pasteurized.”

“It makes us more of a tribe,” she says slowly, no doubt thinking of her guests, “Because it harkens back to taking care of each other and taking care of the land.”

Oomen grew up on a farm in downstate Oceana County, and thus understands the community effect of the fall harvest. The last crops of kale, spinach and beets are picked, the pumpkins and squash grow up to become tasty dishes, jack-o-lanterns and seasonal centerpieces, and of course the apples are ready for picking.

Apples provide a season’s worth of activities and deliciousness, from picking them, to making apple pie, apple crisp, apple strudel, apple sauce, apple butter and apple jam, to just wrapping the apples up in newspaper for safe-keeping in the attic, which Oomen’s mother used to do. Growing up, her neighbor had a huge, several-layered press. They would invite people over to make cider ever year, and they would sell the cider before it was illegal to sell unpasteurized cider.

This is a common story for people in Northern Michigan. Not everyone owns a press, but almost everyone’s neighbor, aunt, uncle or friend owns one. If not, we know someone who is a part of someone’s crew or someone who owns an apple orchard or maybe just a group of fertile trees. Each year in October and November, our refrigerators, cellars, attics and fruit baskets overflow with apples and their delicious derivations.

Just as the work of making cider cannot be done alone, neither can the consumption of apples. Picked by the bushel and baked by the pie-full, apples are never a one-man show. They force us to enlist the help of our friends and neighbors to put away the bounty we’ve picked, pressed, cooked, canned and baked.

Robert Foulkes, a member of the Oomen-Early cider party, leans over to share the history of apples in America. “They say,” he begins conspiratorially, “that America was drunk on apple cider from 1820 to 1840—which explains the lack of history that we have from that time.”

Foulkes is correct: Apple-cider is an integral part of American history. Our famous Johnny Appleseed, often hailed for spreading cheer, Christianity, and apple seeds throughout the young country, was actually on a mission to make sure every new settlement in America had apple trees ready to make hard cider waiting for them. Apples have been among the first steps in building community since our country began.

Family traditions

One week later, in the leaf-carpeted pavement behind Kasson Sand & Gravel owner Robert Noonan’s garage, a different tribe share’s the history of its apple cider press. “How old is this press?” repeats Noonan, leaning forward slightly, his eyebrows raised. “Oh I don’t know. My dad had it, and then I rebuilt it about 30 years ago. It’s probably from the late 1800s or early 1900s.” A search for a date on the old metal frame reveals only that it was produced in Springfield, Ohio, but we do know that the Noonan apple cider tradition dates back to Robert, Sr.’s childhood.

“Oh, we’ve probably been doing this every year for 45 years,” he says, referring to the annual tradition of gathering with his children, and now grandchildren, to press the cider. Noonan is usually joined by his wife Carolyn, his four children and their families, but today it’s only Bob Noonan, his wife Angela and their two youngest children, Diego and Eddie. The rest of the family is busy preparing for a birthday party for one of the youngest grand children. “Usually Carol makes us donuts too,” says the elder Noonan.

Bob Noonan pours apples from two kinds of trees into one bucket to get an even mixture of both types—yellow delicious and wine sap, both harvested from behind the house where Robert Noonan’s father grew up. “Those trees are probably 100 years old,” he says.

Robert Noonan has been making apple cider since his childhood. His neighbor had a big press, and the whole family would get together and make cider with it. “When I was a kid,” he says, “we’d put it in 55-gallon barrels and we’d drink it ‘til it got hard, then we’d let it set all winter and it’d make apple cider vinegar.”

The first batch of apples is crushed into the wooden bucket below. “Look!” yells Diego, nine years old, pointing at a trickle bleeding from the bottom of the barrel, “the juice!”

Once the crushed apples are moved forward and pressed under the second wheel, Angela and Robert Noonan strain the juice through a strainer and a clean t-shirt and funnel it into a gallon jug. The jug is passed around and we all take a first sip to make sure it’s good. Of course it’s good.

“We used to make apple jack,” says Robert Noonan. They’d put raisins and sugar in the cider and let it ferment.

“But now we just make ‘apple pie’,” says Angela Noonan. They put cider on the stove and warm it up with some cinnamon and everclear. “It tastes just like apple pie … but it’s really strong,” she laughs. Robert Noonans, Jr. and Sr. just smile and nod, remembering decades of past cider-making gatherings.

Originally from Mexico, Angela was introduced to the family 11 years ago when she married Bob. Married into a close-knit farming family, Angela quickly learned the drill, and now she makes apples pies and applesauce with the best of them.

Their children have grown up with this, and look forward to it every year. When asked what his favorite part about making apple cider is, Eddie, five years old, says “Ummmmmm, juice. I like drinkin’ it.”

“Tasting the cider when it’s just done,” says Diego, “that’s my favorite part about it.” But the boy shows his true colors when he begs his dad to let him punch the discarded apple bits out of the barrel and into the back of the gator — his actual favorite part of the process. “This is a once in a life-time chance to punch apples,” he explains. There really are so few opportunities to punch fruit nowadays.

The second batch starts up and Angela takes a turn at the crank. The two sons gather on a ladder while their dad pours apples into the press, and they watch the apples turn from perfect shiny red and green orbs to a mass of crushed fruit.

A small physics lesson ensues as Diego asks why there is also a wheel spinning on the other side of the press. “That’s the fly wheel,” answers Bob. “It’s there to balance the weight and make it easier to crank. It keeps up the momentum.”

When it’s time to move the barrel forward and squish out the juice, Diego picks up a long piece of wood and inserts it into the wheel like his dad before him. “This is easy dad,” he says, surprised at his own strength.

“Yeah, I know,” says Bob, not finished with the physics lesson, “it’s leverage.”

As he watches his grandson become the next apple cider-making master of the family, Robert Noonan grows reflective. “This is always the most fun time of the year—making apple sauce and sauerkraut,” he says.

The Noonans started the apples a couple weeks early this year. They usually wait until early November because, “the apples get sweeter when it’s colder,” he explains. “The nights need to get below freezing.” Meanwhile, his batch of sauerkraut is already setting in the garage.

After an hour, there are two empty apple bags, a gator full of apple-scraps, eight gallons of apple cider, a few tired Noonans and couple of sticky kids.

Angela tells her young apple-cider-making, Polish-Mexican children, in Spanish, to wash their hands, and it occurs to me that perhaps apple cider is as representative of America as apple pie. After all, aren’t we just the non-pasteurized, delicious, community-produced product of a mixed barrel of apples?