A hundred apples a day

September 11, 2025
Owl Feather Farm, San Juan Island

It’s liquid gold.

The first apple cider that pours down from the first pressing of the first days of fall is sheer country treasure, like birdsong in a cup. You take that cup and hold it under the spout as the trickle turns to a cataract, take a long slug and offer the cup around to everyone here at the small flat above the orchard at Owl Feather Farm. It’s magic.

A hundred apples a day
Photo courtesy Diana Haass

The cider tastes far more robust than anything you can buy—tangy, rich, tart. We don’t grow modern American sugar-apples here at the farm, the ones you find in most stores and most farm market bins. They’re sickeningly sweet—emphasis on sickening—and most people are unaware that their palates have been manipulated into craving that sucrose surge. The Midwest ag industry and federal government formed a cabal to do this, and their success has reached deep into American life. But not as far as False Bay, where our farm lies.

Our cider has depth and character. First time tasters are stunned, grins breaking out, eyebrows up in surprise. Each pressing, a hundred apples or so (we have hundreds on our 22 apple trees), yields about 3 gallons of cider. We park a half gallon in the fridge to use for the next couple weeks; distribute quarts to friends and family to take home; stash the rest in glass bottles in the freezer for the dead of winter when it is a golden reminder of the blessings of our land.

A hundred apples a day
Photo courtesy Diana Haass

There’s no better toast to the wonders of a life in the country than to raise a glass of cider at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s day.

But the marvelous cider is not the only reason for autumn afternoons pressing orchard fruit. It’s a communal event that harks back a century or two to times when family, friends and neighbors shared work and reward in small local groups. It’s not just making cider; it’s sharing the making. There’s a lot of evidence that lifelong social activity fends off dementia and depression. It’s sure an antidote for despair, no matter what times we inhabit.

Wellness is not just work. Making cider is actually quite easy—gather a tub of apples, rinse them off, slice them into halves and pitch them in the crusher, set the barrel below the press and start winding the jack down. Fend off the yellowjackets, let the early autumn sun bathe you in amber warmth, inhale the heady aroma of ripe apples. It’s a prescriptive dose of fun. How you live is the best medicine to determine how long you live, and how well.

Our new press is actually a 40-year-old antique given us by a retired couple in Oregon who simply wanted their grandparents’ heirloom to continue life as a miracle machine; and we will do so four times this fall, friends, family, neighbors and more, followed by a harvest supper with harvest nectar. The miracle is not the cider or the press or the apples or the gathering, it’s everything all combined, an existential elixir for trying times.

—Eric Lucas

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