What the harvest brings

By Emily Sapienza
VillageSoup/Knox County Times Reporter

(Sep 19): The Cole family of Rockland has an apple tree that bears fruit every other year. This year the crop was so abundant that the weight of the apples on the branches was too much for them to bear, and many branches broke and cracked.

Don Cole tried to save other branches from meeting the same fate by picking as many apples as he could, after the sun came out Sept. 15.

Now the Coles have far too many apples to be eaten outright. While Laurie Cole likes to make apple pie, the apples from her tree tend to be small, she said, and that means lots and lots of peeling. So a friend of the Coles' will take most of the apples and use them to make hard cider, she said.

In less than an hour, Don Cole filled an entire bucket with apples. His friend had filled a beverage cooler earlier in the day.

Laurie Cole doesn't know what kind of apple tree it is. Some of its apples are quite sweet like delicious apples, while others are tart and taste like Macintosh, she said.

For the Cole family, cider brewing is an entertaining response to a prodigious growing season. For the Savage family of Union , turning a crop into alcoholic beverages is how they make their living.

At Savage Oaks Vineyard and Winery in Union , Holly and Elmer Savage not only make wine, but also grow the grapes for making it.

They planted the vineyard in 2002. It took the vines a few years to grow enough to yield a crop for wine making. That lag time gave the Savages a chance to learn about making wine, Holly said on Sept. 16.

In the cozy wooden shed turned tasting room, the Savages take turns serving customers and visitors to their farm. Wine is always available for tasting, when the winery is open. Naturally raised beef and pork are also available at the tasting shed. The livestock are out back and available for visits.

The Savages grow nine varieties of grapes, both red and white, for making seven different wines. They also make apple wine, though the apples don't come from their land.

While the temperature has been threatening to drop to a freeze over the past few nights, Elmer Savage said he hopes the frost stays away for at least another week to give the grapes a little more time to ripen. Grapes on the vine can survive a frost, but it stops their ripening process, he said.

Once the grapes are ripe they will be pressed and the winter wine making will begin.

The Savages not only make a variety of products from the Midcoast, but are also keeping the Maine farm family tradition alive with their small-farm practices and family run business.