AllOtsego.com: Years Of Pressing Apples At Dyn’s Cider Mill

Years Of Pressing Apples At Dyn’s Cider Mill

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

0 Comments: