Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 2, 1993 TAG: 9311020085
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Kathleen Wilson
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They're mighty proud of their apple butter.
Proud, but not as covertly proprietary as fried chickenmeister Colonel Saunders and his secret herbs and spices.
There's no element of gourmet intrigue here. These are plain, good, solid Christian folk.
Want to know how they make apple butter? They'll share the recipe.
Just ask.
Core, peel and chop 89 bushels of stamen apples then mix with 320 pounds of sugar, a teaspoon or two of highly concentrated cinnamon, then stir continuously for 12 hours in four 100-gallon copper kettles under a about a zillion stars on a crisp October night before pouring into more than 800 mason jars of all shapes and sizes.
It was well after 1 a.m. on a recent Friday night when Olen Hylton solemnly dipped his finger into a steaming copper kettle out behind the church on Cove Road.
The crowd fell so respectfully silent that all you could hear were the sounds of campfire flames, crickets, and the glub-glub gurggles of the nectar in the kettle.
"That's the most sophisticated tasting system you'll ever see," whispered Galen Saul.
Like a sommelier endorsing a fine bottle of wine, Olen - a connoisseur of apple butter wearing a plaid flannel shirt - gave his approval with a simple nod.
It is Olen's tastebuds - and Olen's tastebuds alone - that determine the exact moment that what's in the kettle ceases to be apples, sugar and cinnamon and commences its life as the world's greatest apple butter.
No one can quite put their finger on exactly when this apple butter tradition began.
`I been coming here to do this since I was 6 ," said Peter Ammerman, who with his new wife, Peggy, was stirring the concoction with one of the sycamore paddles Olen made himself.
In a corner of the church's fellowship hall, Laura Smith, 11, and Kelly Otey, 5, were fast asleep in sleeping bags.
Four-year-old Wolfgang Chenault was anything but sleepy, buzzing around squeaking, "I smell apple butter! I smell apple butter!" While the
crowd tended the four copper kettles outside, Frances Marshall was busy in the kitchen making her made-from-scratch biscuits and stirring a bowl of homemade vegetable soup made from the leftover broth of the church's annual love feast.
Here and there, you'd occasionally tiptoe past a man who'd dozed off sitting up in a folding chair.
This year, they figured, it was time for one generation to pass this tradition to the next.
It was time for Olen Hylton to pass his wooden spoon down to Robert Chenault, whose wife, Cindy, was one of the many jousting with apple butter from the end of 6-foot paddles.
Olen dipped a spoonful out of a kettle and ladled into the middle of a saucer, then turned it upside down.
"It ain't movin'," he remarked flatly, giving the go-ahead to Doug Laurance, Dean Mannon, Mike Smith and the others waiting to begin the bucket brigade transfer from kettles in the back yard to the 800 to mason jars on tables in the fellowship hall.
Ogretta Bayer's mother used to store apple butter in a milk crock in the basement, capped with newspaper tied with twine.
"There are always more orders than apple butter," explained Ogretta, as the spirits of apple butter present and future stood shoulder to shoulder reminiscing about the spirits of apple butter past over hundreds of steaming jars.
They sell it for $5 a quart or $20 a gallon. With such high perceived value you can imagine how careful they are not to spill a drop.
Proceeds from this year's apple butter will go to renovating the loft over the old church, which served as a hospital during the Civil War.
They wind up this long day near 3 a.m., using Frances' warm biscuits to sop up what was left inside the kettles.
Galen, a chivalrous gentleman who thought I looked cold and insisted I wear his jacket, also parted with a jar of apple butter from his order for me to take home.
"You should see that man roller skate!" I was told of my seventysomething flannel-shirted Lancelot.
Once at a church-sponsored roller skating outing, they swear Galen skated with every girl at the rink.
Yet even at 3 a.m. Galen remained shy about rumors of his boundless energy.
"I think the last time I was up this late I was watching the Braves."
by CNB