It’s a crystal clear autumn day in southern Vermont. I’m on the road with the College of the Atlantic apple class. This morning we visited Woods Cider Mill in Springfield, VT where I had the pleasure of meeting Willis Wood who’s been pressing cider seven days a week for nearly fifty apple seasons. It was wonderful to listen to his talk about the their operation and to see the 19th century, simple, slow and mesmerizing, belt-driven cider press as well as the steaming wood-fired, maple-syrup-pan-set-up for boiling down the cider into their signature cider syrup and cider jelly.

From there we continued on to visit Erin Robinson who gave us a tour of the orchards at Scott Farm in Dummerston and Lily Dutton, a former COA student and intern on our farm, who gave us a tour of her family’s orchards and the Dutton Farm Stand in Newfane.