KIRTLAND, Ohio — Something sweet is cooking in northeast Ohio where a favorite fall fruit is being celebrated and preserved.
What You Need To Know
- Apple Butter and Cider Weekend took place at Metroparks Farmparks
- Horticulture manager, Valerie Reinhardt, helped children make apple cider and apple butter
- Volunteers cut, cored and peeled about two bushels of apples to prepare the day’s batch of apple butter
Apple Butter and Cider Weekend took place Saturday and Sunday at Lake Metroparks Farmpark.
Volunteers of all ages helped preserve the apple harvest by squeezing the fruit into cider and cooking it down into butter just like in the days before there was refrigeration.
That’s where Cecelia Nagy showed off her eye for choosing good apples.
“Cause they’re red,” the 5-year-old said.
She and her little brother, Joe, helped preserve this year’s harvest at the Farmpark by placing whole apples in a grinder that were then pressed into cider.
But the kids weren’t the only ones standing by for a sweet treat.
“Shoo, shoo, shoo,” said Cecelia. “It was just a bee.”
“Something I’ve learned with the cidering is to respect your insect world because the yellow jackets love cider as much as you do,” said Valerie Reinhardt, the horticulture manager for Lake Metroparks Farmpark.
“So, I’m in charge of all the apples,” she said.
She said she’s been a part of Apple Butter and Cider Weekend for 26 years.
“Hopefully, one of these days I’ll be able to pass the paddle on to somebody else,” Reinhardt said with a laugh.
Until then, she’s helping kids like the Nagys stir the pot.
“We gotta keep the apple butter moving, ‘cause if we don’t keep it moving, it will scorch on the bottom,” Reinhardt said.
Volunteers cut, cored and peeled about two bushels of apples for each day’s batch of apple butter. It takes at least five hours to cook the apples down to the right consistency in their 30-gallon pot over open flames.
But the kids preferred to taste the fruits of the labor.
“I love it!” Cecelia said.
Her mom, Nancy, was glad the family could enjoy the experience together.
“We do a lot of cooking and baking at home, so to get to make some of the ingredients that we work with is kind of neat for them,” she said.
They’re also making memories to last a lifetime.
“It’s a nice addition to your childhood,” Reinhardt said.
“I’ve been doing this for 27 years and there’s people coming out now that I was doing it with when they were kids. And they’re bringing their kids, so it’s kind of neat. You’re seeing another generation come back because they remember doing it themselves as kids.”
