A New England Odyssey

Like wine, not all cider is created equally; the land, the variety of apples, the recipe, and the milling have everything to do with the flavor. Cider-making is a craft, and like so many others, vintage equipment seems to add some intangible edge to the finished product. The apples must be from true cider apple trees, hand-picked, individually-evaluated, and washed with brushes and pressurized, fresh water before they can enter the mill. The process, setting, atmosphere, and ultimately, the taste of the finished product, all dictate the quality of your drinking experience.

Devon Point Farm, located in a New England farmstead among the rolling hills of Woodstock, produces cider made in small batches from vintage apple varieties grown in a century-old orchard – which is never

sprayed. Varieties include rare antique Rhode Island Greening, Baldwin, Rome, Sheep’s Nose, early and cultivars of Red and Golden Delicious. The apples are pressed on a massive piece of working history that’s just as old as the farm itself.

This is the story of Patty and Erick Taylor and their quest for a fully-functioning original Boomer & Boschert apple press. It illustrates their collective dedication to maintain traditions older than our Constitution. Tracking down, transporting, restoring, and repairing 18th and 19th century machinery is a dreadfully slow and difficult task. But, for the Taylors – and countless farmers, makers, and artisans in Connecticut – a vintage tool is synonymous with a high-end ingredient. Without it, something in the final product is missing.

In 2001, Erick and Patty Taylor visited an old cider mill; the owners were helpful and forthright in explaining what it would take to mirror their achievement. Now that apple cider can be purchased throughout the fall at supermarkets, Erick and Patty learned that a successful cider mill would have to be a place where guests could visit, watch the cider being made, enjoy a taste, and watch the ingenious, traditional equipment at work. In order to do that, they needed a press.

The challenge was that vintage presses are long out of use. There are less than a handful left in the entire country; and, those that remain are continuously in use and usually owned by the same family for multiple generations – meaning, very few are willing to part with such a precious vintage machine.

Undaunted, Erick began his search anyway. He scoured the internet and sought out historians and elderly farmers countrywide to pick their brains. For years, he tracked down leads only to find dead ends: the press had been sold, no one knew what happened to it, or it had been dismantled and not all of the parts could be found.

Then, on a snowy day in January, 2015, Erick spotted what looked like the corner of an antique Boomer & Boschert in an online photo of a newly-renovated mill building in the Midwest. He knew instantly that it wasn’t one of the known presses in operation, and the search was on again. Months of research, phone calls, and digging through historical land and real estate records ensued. Finally, Erick was able to track down the owner of the mill building.

Patty and Erick Taylor discovered that the 118-year old press operated continuously for more than a century. It was delivered to its original, Midwest home from Syracuse, NY by horse-drawn wagon. The mill itself was water-powered and the cider mill would produce thousands of gallons of cider for local family farmers, using the farms’ apples. Eventually, the mill went out of operation, and the property’s newest owner

refurbished the building into a suite of offices. Too enormous to move, the press was left in the corner of the building’s newly-renovated, wood-paneled, carpeted boardroom, as a showpiece of American history gone by.

The owner shared that the building was about to be resold, and that in his opinion, the press was more of a piece of nostalgia, rather than a working piece of equipment. Still, he had saved most of the remaining parts. The giant flywheels and gears essential to the press’s operation were in a storage shed out back. Erick’s hopes soared.

The owner agreed to sell the press, provided Erick could remove it from its location without doing any damage to the building. An elegant boardroom had been built around it by the owner, enclosing the space. The walls were paneled in cedar, the floors carpeted, a granite fireplace at one end, and a custom-made cherry conference table right next to the press. The only way to extract this giant was piece by piece, over the clean carpet, and out a narrow 32” doorway.

On a cold, snowy day in late January, 2015, Erick and a team of friends set out with a truck, a large trailer, and tools to see if they could bring home the centerpiece of a business a decade in the making. The press, made of iron and wood, hadn’t been taken apart in more than 100 years, and serious questions remained about whether the colossal iron components could even be moved after sitting that long. Each piece had to be disassembled before it could be moved out of the building and through the slender door.

The five-man team spent two days in single-digit temperatures carefully evaluating, numbering, and disassembling the press. They laid out tarps, padded the doorframe, and carefully moved the cherry board room table out of the way; managed to coax off bolts that had been tightened for generations; located missing parts from storage; and painstakingly labeled each part. They grunted and groaned as they struggled to lift and separate heavy components and carry them onto an overloaded truck and trailer for the wintery journey home.

Patty and a team of relatives and friends pitched in to help carefully strip off layers of thick green paint that had been layered on the press over the last 118 years. They used wire brushes to remove grease, rust, and

chips of paint from metal parts and machinery, oiled gears and cast parts, and repainted portions of the press with apple-red oil paint. Then, the reassembly began. In the icy-cold barn, the same team of family and friends sorted out the carefully-refurbished pieces. One by one, the pieces were refitted, rejoined, and refastened. Patty recalls the day when Erick finished reassembling the gears and flywheel: a moment of truth. As they maddeningly turned the gears by hand, everyone laughed and whooped with joy and relief as the immense apparatuses easily turned and the heavy press beams rose into the air – with Patty and Erick’s two teenage nephews standing on top!

After the victory of the main press’s assembly, Erick turned his attention to countless other challenges: making custom belts to turn the gears, refurbishing the apple grater, and, in accordance with current health

regulations, commissioning a new stainless steel box to house the press. Realizing the apple elevator (conveyer belt) that came with the machine was far too short to make it the distance required in its new location, the generous and skillful team from DG Marshall Associates Inc. in Webster, MA manufactured a new one.

When parts broke, belts flew off their gears, or missing pieces needed recreating, Ernie the machinist – now a close, family friend of Patty and Erick – came over for Sunday breakfast and helped solve the problem. After cracks were found, gears were carefully boxed and shipped to an Amish blacksmith in Pennsylvania to be recast. When the new sheet metal pieces didn’t line up right, Tim from DG Marshall patiently made extra visits to make sure everything was fit perfectly. Erick had to find and assemble a collection of used equipment – an apple brusher-washer, a roller inspection table, and a bulk tank – to complete the list of all the pieces necessary to make cider.

Just after the dissembled parts were unloaded from the ice-covered trailer into the Taylors’ garage in late January, Patty called the State to find out what was required to get a license to make cider. The Taylors invited Ellen, a state inspector, to come and see what they had intended for the cider press and to share their vision of making cider in their beautiful timber-framed barn. Ellen’s first visit generated a long list of items that would have to be completed in order to meet current regulations.

Determined to meet all the inspector’s criteria, the Taylors turned their attention to readying the barn; at the same time, they continued rebuilding and refurbishing the press. In the barn, every crack in every beam and board had to be caulked and filled. Cracks in the floor and around the windows were filled, and the entire interior of the barn was sealed. The rear shed roof area of the barn was closed in by what Patty affectionately called the geriatric building team: her 74-year old father Pete and a family friend Bill (whose younger age will remain unpublished).

Erick’s best friend from boyhood, Stephen, not only helped disassemble, move, and reassemble the press, but he built a service counter and storage cabinet from wood Erick cut off the land, so the Taylors could make and serve apple cider donuts. He also constructed

a clever door within the barn’s giant rolling doors to make the space impervious to insects, while maintaining customers’ ability to enter the structure and view the vintage machine at work.

Ellen stopped by periodically to monitor the progress and guide the Taylors through the arduous process of ensuring everything would be up to the current health code standards. Nine months later, in mid-September 2015, this labor of love resulted in a completelyrestored, fully-operational, antique cider press. Ellen smiled as she conducted her final inspection, granting the Taylors the licenses to make and serve apple cider and cider donuts.

This fall, visit and experience Devon Point Farm and Cider Mill. Gaze upon fields of brilliant orange pumpkins surrounded by cascading autumn foliage, inhale the intoxicating smell of cider donuts, sip a glass of ice-cold, raw cider – fresh off the old press. Savor the last the vestiges of summer with the setting sun on your cheeks. Each run is individually-blended, depending on the season and availability of choice cider apples. No batch is the same; it is a quality in which Erick and Patty Taylor take tremendous pride.

By Erick Taylor

Photos by Winter Caplanson