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Years Of Pressing Apples At Dyn’s Cider Mill
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| 10/16/09 |
By JIM KEVLIN RICHFIELD SPRINGS
For 73 of its years – Dyn’s Cider Mill is celebrating its 80th season right now – it was in a former cheese factory that still stands at the end of Wing Hill Road.
And for years, John Dyn, the second generation to run the operation, dreamed of relocating it to busy Route 28, three miles away.
Son Ken kept that dream alive as he and wife Dale ran the cider mill while raising four sons, John, Greg, “Big Jake” and Travis.
“If I don’t buy land this year,” Ken told his family as 2002 began, “I’m going to stop talking about it.”
Wouldn’t you know, a nice piece of land came up for sale at the corner of Wing Hill Road and Route 28. Perfect.
On July 5, 2002, construction – done mostly by dad and the four sons – began. On Oct. 12, 2002, the dream came true. Business, said Dale, jumped 50 percent that first season. Since, it’s grown to 300 percent of what it was.
“It’s been a lot of work,” she reflected the other day, looking around the combination cider mill, country store and restaurant a stone’s throw from Canadarago Lake. “But it’s worth it.”
At Dyn’s, you’ll see an apple-pressing process very similar to what you would have seen 100 years ago – 125 years ago, to be precise.
That’s when The Hydraulic Press Co. of Gilead, Ohio, manufactured the press that John Dyn bought in the 1950s to replace the original hand-press John’s dad Walter used.
When Ken was a boy, he, brother Walt and sisters Nioga and Sabrina – now Sabrina Bodack, she still helps him out today – would turn the screw-operated press.
In those days, there were perhaps a dozen cider mills around Otsego County. (Today, there are four.)
Ken remembers farmers lined up during pressing season with wagons full of apples, and wagons full of 30- and 50-gallons barrels to take the sweet cider away to be turned into vinegar or applejack.
Dale had Dorothy Hopper paint a picture of the old mill on a saw’s circular blade; Earl McDaniel painted the new one. The two blades hang side by side.
Today, Dyn’s building is one large room, with a stomach-high wooden barrier separating the factory from the customers.
Over on the far wall is the proverbial applecart. Apples are poured through a trap door on its side into a conveyer, which carries them up to a grinder that turns the fruit into a mush.
Ken takes a wooden rack, covers it with a mesh (Dacron replaced burlap some years ago, and hoses a thick layer of the mush onto the mesh.
He and Sabrina fold the mesh to hold the mush in place, put another rack on top of it and repeated the process.
The racks were 10 high before Ken pushed the stack into the press, which pushes from the bottom up. The resulting juice is sucked through an ultra-violet-light pasteurizer and into a stainless-steel refrigerated tank.
Ashley Van Brink fills the jugs from the tank, ready to be sold within a couple of minutes of the pressing.
There’s a meant-to-be feeling about Ken and Dale Dyn’s story.
Dale Seamon and her future husband grew up a couple of farms from each other near the Exeter-Richfield town line. Their mothers – Shirley Seamon and Beatrice Dyn – were good friends.
The future husband and bride went to Richfield Springs Central School, graduating about the time Ken bought a ‘66 Chevelle.
“It was brand new,” Dale said with a laugh. “I thought he was rich!”
Ken and Dale married in 1968. After a few years doing construction, the young husband and wife took over the family farm in 1974.
They milked 100 Holsteins and – as Dyns had been doing for two decades by then – pressed cider from Labor Day to Thanksgiving.
Early on, Dale began developing the retail side of the business with homemade pies. “$2.50 apiece!” she said, and the couple laughed again at that memory.
“I wouldn’t have the dishes done,” she said, “but” – working through the night – “I’d have my apples peeled.”
Summer squash, zucchini, butternut squash and other produce became part of the picture. Today, local maple syrup, honey from the Dyns’ 11 hives (each produces about 300 pounds), and such specialties as salsa bottled with the Dyn’s brand have been added to the inventory.
Sundays, you can buy breakfast. Wednesdays, there’s spaghetti.
Since moving to the new location, Dyn’s season has expanded to nine months of the year, attracting campers in the summer, leaf-peepers in the fall and snowmobilers in winter. (A trail runs right behind the store.)
Throughout, locals are an important sector. “Everybody is so good to us,” said Dale. “They support us. We’re really grateful.”
The Dyns’ cider is a blend of two or three varieties, Macs, Delicious and others.
As Thanksgiving nears, they get more and more requests for cider from Northern Spy apples, so they shift production in that direction.
“It’s sweet, syrupier,” said Ken. “It has a flavor all its own.”Labels: 10-23-09, AllOtsego, Cider Pressing |
posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 12:00 AM   |
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Willy’s – Scenic Drive To Fun Destination
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By JIM KEVLIN SCHENEVUS
 The “multiply” part came first for William and Mary Gartung.
The couple, who sold their Long Island farm and bought one north of here in 1960, produced seven boys and five girls.
The dozen kids produced more than 50 grandkids – let’s leave it at “more than 50,” as Mary Allen, sister Linda Clements and their brother’s daughter-in-law Cat Gartung kept losing count the other day as they tried to add them up.
And the 50-plus grandkids have so far produced more that 100 great-grandchildren.
 The “fruitful” part – the apple part – came in 1992, when patriarch William died and the next generation had to think about how to keep the farm in the family for their mother’s sake.
At the time, Mary was living in Florida and sent a missive north to her brothers and sisters: Why not develop a seasonal cider mill, something like the Michaelses’ Fly Creek operation, to cover the taxes?
It would be easy, she reasoned. “I was wrong, it’s not that easy,” said Mary, who nonetheless brims with enthusiasm.
Another relative saw an old photo of Willy Gartung and a draft horse at his original farm and said, “Why not Willy’s Farm?”
And so Willy’s Farm & Cider Mill was launched in 1994, and it has survived today with the help of the many dozen offspring.
“Whoever shows up, we put them to work,” Mary said the other Friday – the operation was to open at noon – as Cat and Linda peeled apples in the kitchen.
Mom Mary, now 94, was over in the corner, sipping cider and taking a call from son Ernest, en route to home from Tennessee.
In the front room, baby Willa – granddaughter Ashley Wilkersen’s baby – was asleep in an apple box. Her brother, Eli, 16 months, was cheerfully underfoot.
At first, the family enhanced the cider selling with pumpkins and Indian corn, but has since added a corn maze, games for kids, a country-crafts store in the big barn, and horse-drawn wagon rides.
It was feared the wagon rides would come to an end when Mary’s brother John Gartung died two years ago, but since, two of his children, son John and daughter Diana Brady, have become certified wagon masters and keep the rides going in his memory.
Because of state regulations requiring pasteurizing, Willy’s Farm sells Beak & Skiff cider from Lafayette.
But, in Schenectady, the family acquired an antique press made by Thomas-Albright Co. of Goshen, Ind., and custom-presses apples for others’ personal use. (The other weekend, a longtime customer was due to arrive from Connecticut with a pick-up full of apples.)
The record press so far was 147 bushels, which made 75 gallons of cider.
Finding the press wasn’t hard, said Mary, but it arrived in boxes, and mechanically inclined relatives painstakingly put it together from a photo, quite a puzzle.
Driving up from Schenevus, a series of Burma-Shave-like signs keep customers coming.
“The pies are bakin’” says the first sign as you drive along the lovely Elk Creek valley on Route 34. And, a little beyond, “...you’d better get shakin’.”
Once you take a left up Badeau Hill Road and start to wonder if you’ve missed it, there’s “Don’t despair...” and a little farther, “you’re almost there.”
And so you are. Another
IF YOU GO: Willy’s Farm & Cider Mill is open noon-5 Fridays, 9-5 Saturdays, 11-5 Sundays. From Oneonta, take I-88 to Exit 18; left on Route 7, right on Route 34, and follow signs. From Cooperstown, take Murphy Hill Road to Route 166 south, left on Norton Cross, left on Route 35, right on 34A, right on 34 and follow the signs.Labels: 10-23-09, AllOtsego, Frontpage |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 12:00 AM |
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WEEKEND’S BEST BETS
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MSO Auction Has Something For Everyone
Performances by Oneonta’s Ultimate Idols, cash bar, Main Street Oneonta’s annual fundraising auction with “Big Chuck” Imperio as auctioneer, and a chance to get a look at Foothills Performing Art Center’s new building.
What’s not to like?
MSO’s auction, with all the attendant hoopla, begins at 5:30 p.m. (preview at 5) Friday, Oct. 23, in Foothill’s atrium.
BRA ART: Vestal’s Common Threads Quilters Guild’s “Brazieres For A Cure” – bras, provided by Maidenform and decorated to dramatize the fight against breast cancer – opens 5-7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cooperstown Art Association, 22 Main St.
‘PAL JOEY’ John O’Hara’s novel, set to music by Rogers and Hart, will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday at SUNY Oneonta’s Goodrich Theater, produced by Orpheus Theater. Details at orpheustheatre.org
PLAY IT SAFE: Safe Kids of Otsego County Weekend is 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, at the Fly Creek Cider Mill. Get reflective bags and stickers for your kids.
HAYDN MASS: The Catskill Choral Society performs Haydn’s “Grosse Mariazeller Messe in C” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at First United Methodist Church, 66 Chestnut, Oneonta.
NATIVE FEST: Music, presentations and tours of the Iroquois bark longhouse are featured at a Native American Festival, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., at the SUNY Oneonta camp off upper East Street. Free; public welcome.
FIDDLIN’ Take a foliage drive to a Fiddlers’ Jam, 2-3:30 p.m. Sunday, Middlefield United Methodist Church. Bring not just your fiddle, but guitar, mandolin, bass, banjo or harp and join in. Singers welcome, too. Off County Route 166.
FINAL FOLIAGE: Before it falls, foliage may be viewed from a Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley train, departing at 1 p.m. Friday, Saturday and Sunday from the Milford Depot.
Labels: 10-23-09, AllOtsego, Frontpage, Weekend's best bets |
| posted by The Freeman's Journal @ 12:00 AM |
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