The Generosity of Apples
It’s mid-October when I meet Jon Piana at the Fable Farm Fermentory in Barnard, Vermont. I’d driven there on a dirt road that climbed steadily for a handful of miles; along the roadsides lay dense forests interspersed with sweeping fields, the latter shorn of the season’s last cutting of hay. I passed a herd a Belted Galloway cattle loafing in the morning sun. Fallen leaves lay thick on the shoulders of the road. When I rolled down my window, I could smell something sweet and earthy and thought it might be the leaves in their slow decay.
I found Piana in the upstairs of the leased barn where he and his brother Christopher run their cider and vinegar business. A thin man, with an angular face and a ponytail, he sat at a table, in a straight-backed chair. A pair of crutches leaned against the table. He’d fallen off a ladder only a few days prior while arranging tarps over the walls of the house he’s building. The injury came at a particularly inconvenient time since Fable Farm relies heavily on apples harvested from wild and the early “pioneer” trees planted generations ago, a practice that requires a tremendous amount of hand labor. “We like using apples that wouldn’t otherwise be used,” Piana explained. “It’s a lot of work, but it feels right to us.”
Fable Farm Fermentory began a handful of years ago, when Jon and Chris were still growing vegetables, and living in an old farmhouse in the village of Barnard. The brothers would forage enough apples to make a couple of barrels of cider, which they’d then offer to folks who came to pick up their CSA shares on Thursday afternoons. “That’s when we really noticed its effect on the energy of the community,” says Jon. “The spirit of apple trees is very amiable and humorful, and that’s the effect our cider has on people.”
It was precisely this energy that compelled the brothers, who’d grown up in Goffstown, NH, and moved to Vermont together after their respective close calls with academia, to shift their focus to cider. “Cider has a real appropriateness to the region,” explains Piana. “Culture, history, lore, and ease of harvest... it’s all there.”
The ciders produced by the Piana brothers tend to be dry, and “true to history,” a quality that Jon Piana believes is driving much of the demand for Fable Farm’s offerings. “People are becoming acquainted with dry cider again. They’re starting to rediscover its complexities and respect it in a different way.” These complexities are at least in part the result of Fable Farm’s commitment to producing unadulterated ciders utilizing the natural yeasts that live on the fruit, with zero chemical additives. “People are becoming aware that the ingredients in wine don’t legally have to be on the label. You end up with wines that have a lot of chemicals in them. We put every ingredient on our labels, even if it’s only one.”
This year, Fable Farm Fermentory will produce approximately 3,000-4,000 gallons of cider and vinegar. It’s a big shift from the two-barrel operation in the old farmhouse basement, and it probably needs to get bigger still. “We’re two visionaries who just sort of jumped into it,” says Piana. “There’s so much potential, but we still need to grow to make it viable over the long run. And this sure isn’t helping,” he chuckles, gesturing to his injured ankle.
Meanwhile, the Piana brothers will rely on local help while Jon’s ankle heals. And they’ll likely have time to reflect on the reason they started making cider in the first place, which has always placed a higher priority on the community, than on economics. Yes, the money will have to come – and by all indications, it will – but the Fable Farm Fermentory mission of offering its community a healthy, joyful beverage cultivated directly from the generosity of the land has never felt more alive. And those humble CSA gatherings where the brothers first offered their cider to the public? They’ve grown into one of the most vibrant weekly gatherings in Vermont, with live music, good food, and yes, lots and lots of cider.
