Tomato Apple Chutney

is recipe is from Libbie Gilmour (Jane Elizabeth Gilmour, married name Pettit), the great-grandmother of Sierra Ryan. She kept a handwritten recipe book, which she started in 1908. She brought it with her when she moved to Santa Cruz with her husband and two small daughters in 1919, and continued to use it for the rest of her life. It is filled with the names of friends, neighbors and family members who gave her recipes that she added to her book over the years.

3 pounds cooked apples (see notes below) ½ pound sliced tomatoes (about 1 cup) ¼ pound chopped onion (about ½ cup) ½ pound raisins (about 1 cup) ¾ pound sugar (about 12⁄3 cups) 2 ounces ground ginger (about ¼ cup, see notes below) Dash cayenne 3 ounces salt (about 1⁄3 cup) 2 cups vinegar

Moisten with vinegar. Cook slowly and covered for 6 hours in oven or 4 hours over slow heat. Stir often.

HERITAGISTAS’ NOTE: We decided that the ground ginger means chopped fresh ginger. We used 3 pounds of apples, then cooked them, so the total was under 3 pounds cooked. We think some of the measurements are off and used 5 tablespoons salt and 5 tablespoons fresh ginger. We used apple cider vinegar.

As a resident of the 95076 zip code, I’ve noticed some changes taking place lately. ere’s an obvious hip factor emerging in what I’ve known as a predominantly working-class community. Young people and families are moving to Watsonville from surrounding areas to save money on rent, to buy homes and farms, and to start businesses. New artisanal food producers, eateries, cafes, wineries and craft breweries are popping up—and thriving. e question bears asking: Is Watsonville becoming the Brooklyn of the Monterey Bay?

While small-scale food and drink businesses are currently trending in Watsonville, the Pajaro Valley has a rich edible history that includes boom times with whiskey, apples, strawberries and the latest cash crop— raspberries. e earliest brewery in Santa Cruz County was the Pajaro Brewery, established in 1860. And Martinelli’s—which opened a new storefront in Watsonville last year—got its start in the Pajaro Valley back in 1868, when Stephen G. Martinelli made fermented sparkling cider with apples from California’s first commercial apple orchards.

But new food and beverage businesses are bursting onto the scene: My Mom’s Mole, e Green Waffle, Hidden Fortress Coffee, Corralitos Brewing and Elkhorn Slough Brewing, to name a few. And this prompts the comparison to other highly fertile and exciting food artisan hubs popping up outside more expensive and larger cities around the country, Brooklyn being the most prominent.

And next to the Watsonville airport an exciting new food and drink complex called e Hangar is taking shape. It includes a taproom run by the folks behind Beer irty in Soquel inside a restored World War II era warehouse, a cluster of six shipping containers converted into eateries and an outdoor seating area with fire pits.

While tenants were still being lined up at press time, developer Brian Dueck said the urban-styled Hangar complex would include a coffee shop, juice bar and, hopefully, other artisanal businesses such as a bakery, ice cream maker and vegetarian food stall. He plans to open in the first quarter of 2018.

Watsonville’s new food businesses share a similar ethos—family recipes, cultural heritage, healthy convenience food and local, organic produce—and many can be traced back to El Pajaro Kitchen Incubator, established by El Pajaro Community Development Corp. in 2013.

IN THE KITCHEN

El Pajaro Kitchen is filled with the sticky-sweet aroma of strawberry jam the first time I visit. At one of the 15 stations in the vast kitchen space, jam is being made from donated local, organic strawberries for the annual Watsonville Strawberry Festival. At another station, El Nopalito Produce is packing freshly trimmed and peeled nopales. Teresa’s Gourmet Foods is making salsa around the corner.

“Energy is booming here. ere’s a lot of heart and there’s a vibrant movement in terms of wanting to change what Watsonville is,” says Cesario Ruiz, who manages the 8,000-square-foot commercial kitchen and also uses it to make his own sauces called My Mom’s Mole.

Executive director Carmen Herrera says small food businesses like My Mom’s Mole and Kitchen Witch Bone Broth (a former client) underscore a renewed interest in old family traditions, remedies and recipes—a reclamation and rebranding of local foods.

“I don’t want to take credit for things that are much bigger than us,” says Herrera, “but I think that programs like the kitchen help to brand Watsonville as a very interesting community, avant garde in many ways.”

She also points out that Watsonville’s location gives clients close proximity to local, organic produce and makes the kitchen central to the Monterey Bay area. Lakeside Organic Gardens is less than two miles

Puckering up at Corralitos Brewing’s hops picking party

IN THE COMMUNITY

My Mom’s Mole’s Ruiz has been targeting the Watsonville market for his sauces this year, working with other local businesses like Elkhorn Slough Brewing and doing pop-ups throughout the county. He’s also branching out and applying to events in the Bay Area, such as the Eat Real Festival in Oakland.

“Sometimes it feels like a lot, but looking at the bigger picture, this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to share my mom’s mole with the rest of the world.”

My Mom’s Mole will also be serving at the annual benefit dinner for Food What?! on Sunday, September 17. Food What?! is a nonprofit organization inspiring low-income and struggling teenaged youth across Santa Cruz country through meaningful work and healthy food. Ruiz sits on the board of directors.

Another food artisan at El Pajaro Kitchen is e Green Waffle, owned by Martin and Blanca Madriz. ey created their signature green grab-and-go waffle because they were looking for healthy and convenient foods that they could eat and share with their three children. Blanca, who was born and raised in Watsonville, teaches math and science at E.A. Hall Middle School and knows that mornings can get quite hectic for parents.

Both Blanca and Martin had gotten into physical fitness and Blanca started making protein pancakes for herself that contained protein powders and artificial ingredients. en she thought, “Why am I eating this if I wouldn’t feed it to my kids?” ey saw the need for real, healthy and convenient food products that were made without artificial ingredients. After about a year of trial and error, they arrived at the current recipe, which somehow manages to create just the right combination of crunch, tenderness and flavor with just oats, egg whites, spinach, bananas and either yams, cauliflower, blueberries or apples. eir kids, family and friends all approved.

Blanca and Martin love being in Watsonville and sourcing their ingredients locally. “It’s just great to be here, surrounded with all these food sources,” says Martin, who also speaks to kids at E.A. Middle School about how to start their own businesses.

While their product is flying off the shelves in the Santa Cruz area, the Madrizes see the need for more education in terms of nutrition in Watsonville. eir goal is to give back to their community and show people that eating healthy can be fun, creative and convenient. “We want the community to see our presence here, try new foods and think of their health and future.” en there are people like Amelia Loftus—owner of Hidden Fortress Coffee Roasting—who already have an established business but utilize the consulting aspect of El Pajaro Kitchen. Although she didn’t need kitchen space, she was able to get help with crowdfunding so that Hidden Fortress could get its doors open.

Loftus started roasting coffee while she was with the now-defunct Seven Bridges Cooperative, which she helped found and run for 15

years. Before opening her shop on Hangar Way, she roasted in small batches at her micro-farm, using solar power and propane, and did farmers’ markets and made deliveries in conjunction with a CSA egg program. e mission of Hidden Fortress is to support the hard-working farmers who grow coffee. Loftus and her husband Patrick both have farming backgrounds. Amelia has roots in a Vermont commune—her childhood story is told in the book We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America. Patrick is straight from the west side of Santa Cruz, back when it was still farmland.

“I’ve found Watsonville to be a really supportive environment,” Loftus says. “When we first started building the café, I got a call from Kurt Overmeyer (the city’s former economic development manager) saying ‘Welcome, we’re so glad to have you.’ And it was really nice to receive that.”

FIELD TO FORK

While at first glance farm-to-table is a relatively new concept in Watsonville, the family-owned Gizdich Ranch has been getting people out into the field and all touchy-feely with their fruit for quite some time now. Second-generation farmers Vincent and Nita Gizdich were the masterminds behind opening the farm to the public with a “pik-yorself” berry field. Vince Gizdich, the current (third generation) owner, recalls that the neighboring farmers turned their nose up at this nontraditionalist idea.

But it wasn’t such a bad idea, because nearly a century later, people are still going there to pick their own fruit and buy pie. Gizdich points out an interesting fact: 7 out of 10 visitors who go out to the farm have a connection with a farm in their past. Visiting the farm certainly brought back my childhood memories of traipsing around upick berry farms with my mom and siblings (never mind that I put more berries in my mouth than in the basket).

You can also find Gizdich pies at California Grill, Lakeside Organic Gardens’ farm-to-table eatery, founded by owner Dick Peixoto and his daughter Ashley. Lakeside Organics is the largest family-owned and operated organic vegetable grower-shipper in the country. e restaurant, now located on Green Valley Road, was established in 2012 and features Lakeside’s organic produce, alongside locally processed meats, and local baked goods and wines.

Ella’s at the Airport, a bit newer on the scene, was founded with the same commitment to fresh, local food. Owner Ella King saw the importance of staying rooted in Watsonville—she loved meeting her farmers and being in the fields, doing things like pulling fresh kohlrabi out of the ground. “Our community is what makes us who we are,” she said at last year’s Event Watsonville, held at El Pajaro Kitchen.

Perhaps the hippest Santa Cruz County food business, fresh sauerkraut maker Farmhouse Culture, moved its facilities from the Old Sash Mill to the middle of a Lakeside Organic Gardens field in 2015. Founder Kathryn Lukas says it was a choice between Pajaro Valley and Oakland, but what made the decision clear was the proximity to the source of their cabbage.

She says, “We need to be in the fields, developing relationships with the people who grow our food.”

Lukas found the property—a production facility and farmhouse in the middle of 19 organic acres—and fell in love with it. Peixoto also saw the value in it and purchased the property with the understanding that Farmhouse Culture would become the tenant. e companies collaborated to do extensive renovations before the move, and Lukas has turned the old farmhouse into an innovation lab. Farmhouse Culture now sources much of its produce from within six miles of its facilities.

“Looking out of my window, where I work every day, I really see Steinbeck country—the area is so rich in food history and there is real potential for a food cultural hub,” says Lukas.

FIELD TO GLASS

One of the local wineries featured at both California Grill and Ella’s at the Airport is Alfaro Family Vineyards. Owned by Richard Alfaro and his wife Mary Kay, this Corralitos gem was founded in 1997, when the couple bought an old 75-acre apple farm and began transforming the property into a vineyard. From just six acres, their vineyards have now grown to 56 acres, with more vines being planted this year.

Before that, the Alfaros owned a local wholesale bakery called Alfaro’s Micro Bakery, which operated from 1991 to 1998 out of the same building that El Pajaro Kitchen now inhabits. e central location was perfect for making deliveries throughout the Monterey Bay area as well as up to San Francisco, and Alfaro recalls that business was good.

But wine had been a lifelong passion and he had planted some vines in Corralitos. As Alfaro points out, fermentation science is the

Hand-processed: Vicente Quintana of El Nopalito Produce and his employees remove thorns from nopales pads at the El Pajaro incubator.

same, whether you’re working with bread or wine. “e hobby just got out of control,” he explains, and the family business thus transitioned from bakery to winery.

According to Alfaro, El Pajaro Kitchen couldn’t have a better spot than in the center of an organic farming community that provides all the right ingredients to work with. He’s also happy that more young people are starting small food businesses in the region.

More wineries and breweries are popping up around the area as well, including Wargin Wines, Freedom Wineworks, Corralitos Brewing Co. and Elkhorn Slough Brewing, adding to local veterans Storrs Winery, Windy Oaks Estate Vineyards and Winery, Nicholson Vineyards, Pleasant Valley Vineyards, River Run Vineyards and Alfaro.

Meantime, these artisans are finding themselves with a growing number of home-grown Watsonville-based food and drink events to participate in, such as those hosted by Annie Glass, Live Earth Farm and Corralitos Open Farm Tours, to name just a few.

“We’re just so grateful to be a part of the community,” Alfaro says. “We love Watsonville.”

Taking a moment to savor my green waffle with strawberry jam, I couldn’t agree more. e up-and-coming Brooklyn of the Monterey Bay? I’ll take it. And while there are challenges to overcome, the community is coming together to meet them with conviction, determination and true entrepreneurial spirit.

Elizabeth Hodges is a freelance writer and owner of Verdant California, based in south Santa Cruz County. During her free time, she enjoys keeping chickens, gardening and connecting with the local food community as communications chair for Slow Food Santa Cruz.

ON THE FARM FORGOTTEN FRUIT

Heirloom apple growers and cider makers breathe new life into historic crop

BY JAMIE COLLINS PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHELLE MAGDALENA AND PATRICK TREGENZA

Zea Sonnabend—a longtime organic inspector for CCOF in Santa Cruz and member of the National Organics Standards Board— lives just outside Watsonville. As she drove back and forth to work over the last three decades, she passed an ever-dwindling number of apple orchards.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that when she inherited a small amount of money, the first thing she did was buy a 10-acre orchard. “Watsonville has a long history of apples and it’s dying and seemed worth preserving,” she says.

While saving a traditional local product drove her initial purchase, she says craziness is what keeps her going. “It just feels like what I was meant to do.” e certified organic orchard, in the Corralitos area, is now called Fruitilicious Farm and includes established Gravenstein, Gala, Red Delicious, Jonagold, Empire and Pippin trees. Although she has a farming background, Sonnabend says she’s learned a lot from the “old timers” and managed to save money by buying up used equipment from apple farmers who were going out of business.

“It all started with one golden yellow apple seedling called a pip,” she explains. “at ended up being known as the Newtown Pippin, which were the first apples to be planted in Watsonville in the 1850s.” e Newtown Pippin was a tremendous discovery due to its balanced tart to sweet Twenty trees are exclusively cider apples from abroad and she doesn’t know how they will produce here.

ratio and a pine-like aroma, which made it excellent for eating fresh, baking into pies and pressing into fresh and fermented cider. e juice from Newtown Pippins is still the basis of Martinelli’s apple cider and has been since the 1880s.

Sonnabend’s eyes sparkle as she leans in and tells the story of England’s Queen Victoria and her love for the yellow-skinned pome.

“omas Jefferson, George Washington and Ben Franklin all grew Newtown Pippins. I can’t remember which one it was, but one of them mailed Queen Victoria the apples as a gift. ey were packed in a barrel with straw to keep them from rotting during the long trip overseas. e queen was so in love with the apples that she declared they could be imported without the tariff that other American goods had. e Newtown Pippin was one of the first commercially grown apples, since 1790, to still be in wide circulation and that is saying something!” Sonnabend says.

Sonnabend and her business partner Terence Welch also tend a six-year-old heirloom apple orchard nearby, where they’ve planted 100 varieties and are waiting patiently to find out how they will produce in the Watsonville area.

Eighty varieties were chosen either because they were trees already existing in California or are culturally significant or have resistance to diseases like apple scab, which are hard for organic growers to control.

CALIFORNIA HEIRLOOMS

A member of the California Rare Fruit Growers and avid seed saver, Sonnabend made sure to propagate what she considers the three most culturally significant heirloom apples discovered in California: Hauer, Skinner’s Seedling and Sierra Beauty. e Hauer apple was named after Peter Hauer, who found it growing alongside Pleasant Valley Road in Aptos in 1890. ought to be the lovechild of a cross between a Cox Orange Pippin and a Yellow Bellflower tree, it is squatty and not much to look at, but the flavor is clove-like, spicy and sweet and the flesh white, with thick skin. is late-season “Christmas Apple” as it came to be known, could be stored in straw until spring, but fell out of favor once refrigeration was common. e Skinner’s Seedling is named after Henry Chapman Skinner, who found it growing in his yard in San Jose. is big yellow/red apple ripens early and is very tart, so it is mainly used for cooking. Its claim to fame is that it needs very little chill time to produce apples, an issue that is coming up now as the climate warms and apple varieties don’t produce as well as they used to in our area.

e best of the California heirlooms in Sonnabend’s opinion is the Sierra Beauty, a firm boxy apple with reddish stripes and a complex herbaceous and floral flavor, that originated near Chico in the late 1800s and stores incredibly well. Locally it is also known as a Winter Gravenstein and was thought to have been extinct until the 1980s, when it was found growing in Mendocino County in an orchard owned by the Gowan family, farmers who still sell their apples at the Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market in San Francisco.

I take a bite of one of the farm’s Red Delicious apples and am pleasantly surprised how tasty and crisp they are, and how the color is blush red, unlike the solid red ones I grew up avoiding due to their mushy texture. Sonnabend explains hers are also more flavorful because they are grown on standard rootstock (as all apples planted in the 1800s and early 1900s were, instead of the semidwarf rootstock that is more common today). erefore, they have deep roots and a more complex flavor profile. “Trees on standard rootstock are able to pull more nutrients from the soil and organic apples always taste better because they are receiving compost and natural fertility instead of chemicals,” she adds.

Standard trees are a thing of the past, as they grow very tall and there isn’t skilled apple picking labor in the area any longer. Having inexperienced workers up on tall ladders harvesting 50 pound bags of apples is a liability. ere is also the fact that workers are less likely to want to work in a standard orchard because the harvest is slower, which means they earn less if they are paid by the pound. Semi-dwarf trees can be picked faster using shorter ladders, however they only live 20 years compared with standard tress, which live as long as a century.

APPLE CITY

e Pajaro Valley was once at the heart of an apple frenzy. Watsonville was dubbed Apple City and there were one million trees producing on 14,000 acres by 1908.

Newtown Pippin and Bellflower were the shining stars of the orchard and fetched the highest prices. Forty packinghouses were built to accommodate the apples, which were shipped out of Moss Landing by boat and through Pajaro, once the train line was completed in the 1870s. e Apple Annual Association was created in 1909 and attracted tens of thousands of people for a weeklong event called e Apple Show Where Apples Grow. e event was much like a circus, with the focus on apples— under the tents were the latest orchard implements, machinery and inventions, displays of wooden apple harvest bins and the latest and greatest crop production tools. Vaudeville acts performed and participants took part in apple crate making, apple packing and pie eating competitions. e streets were jammed with people and the weeklong event ended with a Mardi Gras-style party, fueled by hard cider and celebration.

Over time, Pajaro Valley apples lost their value as miles of orchards were planted throughout the Pacific Northwest and much of the local landscape has been replanted with more lucrative strawberries and raspberries.

Longtime apple growers like the Prevedelli and Gizdich families have managed to stay in business through the apple decline by finding their own niches. In the 1980s, the Prevedellis began farming organically and selling at local farmers’ markets as a way to make a living from their 80-acre farm in Corralitos, where 35 varieties of apples are grown. Eventually, the family also diversified into berries and row crops such as squash and green beans. Now three generations take part in a dozen farmers’ markets, led by Silvia, the family matriarch and Santa Cruz County farmer of the year in 2016. e Gizdich apple orchards stay in business through a type of agritourism, by hosting u-picks and baking their famous pies.

Others have opted to take advantage of the public’s growing thirst for hard cider. Jake Mann’s great grandfather was one of those farmers who came from Missouri in the 1870s and settled into the apple growing rhythm of Watsonville. Hundreds of acres of apple orchards are still managed today by the Mann family and most fruit is still sold to Martinelli’s for juice.

As a fourth-generation farmer, Mann says there is a lot to learn from his father and he’s still absorbing the knowledge of his ancestors, but he’s also adding his own twist.

While thinning fruit on a Kingston Black cider apple tree, he gave me the lowdown on the history of the farm, explaining how the original Bellflower apples were pruned to form arches so horse-drawn carts could be pulled through the trees without bruising the apples.

Now he is experimenting with “top working” existing Red Delicious trees and grafting on cider varieties like Black Twig instead. “I taught myself how to make cider in order to understand how the apples react during fermentation. at way I can manipulate certain factors for the desired characteristics of hard cider. Hard cider makers are requesting the apples be dry farmed and grown organically, or harvested at certain brix (sugar) content,” he says.

He believes ciders are a noble use of apples. Collecting the fruit, crushing it and tasting the memories is one of his favorite pastimes, along with the weekly apple pies his mom makes during harvest.

FARM TO BOTTLE

When Rich and Laura Everett bought their Soquel farm in 2000, it came with established Pippin and Gravenstein apples that were historically sent to Martinelli’s. e Everetts started out selling them for juice, but eventually made their own non-alcoholic cider to sell at their farm stand instead.

Four years ago, Laura—who comes from a winemaking family in Napa—decided to try making hard cider. She planted with a plan; her kids would be off to college by the time the apples started to produce and she would have time for a new project. Laura’s energy and passion are off the charts and the cider she makes showcases that drive.

Husband and wife are particular about how they grow their apples, so particular in fact that they have their own separate orchards that they manage completely differently. Rich grows apples he likes for fresh eating like Honey Crisps, which require significant irrigation. He lets the grasses grow tall between the orchard rows and prunes so that the sun hits all of the apples and they can grow big and juicy.

Laura’s cider apple orchard is dry farmed, tidy and the trees are pruned with a central leader—the more natural way apples grow. Since size doesn’t matter for cider apples, there is little need to thin. Laura’s entire orchard consists of heirloom varieties such as Roxbury Russet, Belle de Boskoop, Yarlington Mill and more.

She dug deep into her memory of college organic chemistry and pored over books to learn as much as she could about the bitter sharps and bittersweet cider profiles. She worked with David Hartzell—friend and home brewer extraordinaire—to come up with some cider she liked, reminiscent of the English style: dry, crisp and not sweet.

Four seasons later, Laura has three ciders available under her Soquel Cider label. e flagship cider is pure Gravensteins; Laura’s Orchard contains a blend of heirloom cider apples only. My favorite of the three is the Barrel Aged, a still cider blend, aged in rye whiskey barrels, that has a depth of flavor and hint of whiskey—which Laura says is best with cheese plates.

Laura is experimenting with capturing the local, wild yeast that grows on the apples in the orchard and has also played around with blends, including farm-grown Greengage plums and Hachiya persimmons in different batches to create spring and fall seasonal ciders. When the tanks can’t hold all the juice that is pressed, she makes apple cider vinegar and plans to offer it in the near future. Everett Farm is the true farm-to-bottle cider maker. “I’m the fermenter, the bottler, the labeler and the marketer!” she says with a laugh. And in tasting the final product, her hard work and dedication show.

As the planet continues to warm and drought and floods become more common, climate will ultimately dictate the crops that can be grown in the Pajaro Valley and elsewhere in the Monterey Bay region. But for now—with the help of these growers and cider makers—local apples have won a reprieve. We hope they will continue to grow and flourish through the years.

Jamie Collins is the owner of Serendipity Farms, which grows organic row crops in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties and distributes them through a CSA, U-picks, farmers’ markets and a virtual farm stand which can be found on Serendipity’s Facebook page.

TANUKI CIDER

Cider making takes Robby Honda back to his roots

You could say Robby Honda has apple cider running through his veins. He has fond memories of apple fights with his brother Brad underneath the autumn leaves on his family’s fourth-generation Gravenstein apple orchard in Sebastopol. Robby has wonderful memories of playing between the orchard rows with his little brother, tossing the rotting windfall apples at each other and smelling the sweetness of the apples ripening on the trees.

He was always drawn to the apple orchard and to farming, but his mother discouraged him from choosing farming as a career. To her, apples represented her grandparents’ hardship, trying to piece together a living as Japanese immigrants in America during the early 1900s.

But Honda came to Santa Cruz to get back to his roots and work with apples in 2010, when he started helping out at Fogline Farm and experimenting with fermenting apples on the property. Over the next few years, Robby mastered fermentation and his brother Brad—a graphic artist in the surf industry—created their label, Tanuki. e cider project was one the brothers could work on together.

Honda currently sources from a few special trees at the Five Mile Orchard in Corralitos, including magnificent 30-feet-tall Bellflowers that have beautiful yellow, almost translucent skin with good acid content and brightly flavored juice. ree ciders have been released so far: Zozois a dry cider made from a 2015 harvest of Newtown Pippin and Mutsu that is unfiltered, unpasteurized and developed in the bottle without the addition of CO2. It is full bodied and mildly carbonated with nuanced farmhouse characteristics and sour notes; Hurricaneis a blend of Newtown Pippin and Mutsu apples from 2015, filtered and fully carbonated in the can. It is crisp, dry and drinks more like cider-style champagne; Pick It Upfrom the 2016 harvest, is a blend of Newtown Pippin, Mutsu, Bellflower and Winter Banana apples. is cider is tart, dry, crisp and fully bottle conditioned with tight, vigorous bubbles.

Home restaurant in Soquel serves Tanuki Cider and chef Brad Briske makes a mindblowing dish using the cider in his black squid-ink spaghetti with Manila clams and pork belly. e sauce is made with chile, miso and Tanuki cider. e use of miso in a pasta dish with cider makes it taste like ramen so many people love it, according to Honda.

Last year his brother and partner in the cider business passed away unexpectedly. is was a heart-wrenching loss and he first considered stopping the cider project. But soon he realized a need to persevere. “Every bottle I share and every time I talk about the cider, it reminds me of my brother Brad,” says Honda, “and it gives me strength and makes me want to work harder. I think my brother is leading me to success from the other side and helping me to take care of the family through the cider business.” —JC