Johnny Appleseed Day

"Eat an apple on going to bed, 

and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.”

Old Welsh saying

October is a week away, and we're losing light at the rate of four minutes a day.  After the hottest and driest summer on record, summer takes a parting shot Thursday, when it might actually reach 80 for the last time.

I'm still picking peppers and tomatoes, but after this week, we won't see 65 degrees again until next spring.  The transition from fall to winter here is quick, as the jet stream moves down from Alaska and parks over the Northwest: cool, grey, wet.

One of the great American legends, John Chapman (aka Johnny Appleseed) was born on September 26, 1774. He was a nurseryman and traveling preacher who started out planting trees in western New York and Pennsylvania.

He really should be called "Johnny Applejack," since most apples were made into hard cider-- the original American tipple. Apple orchards thrived and cider was a way to preserve large harvests. It was a delicious drink and important for food preservation.  Cider, with its purifying alcohol, was much safer than potentially contaminated water. Vinegar is produced by fermenting cider, a crucial ingredient in pickling.

Hard cider averages only about 4 to 6 percent alcohol, since cider apples don’t contain a lot of sugar. John Adams kick-started each day with a tankard of hard cider — he once mused, “It seems to do me good.”  He lived to be 91.  Thomas Jefferson loved cider and devoted a large portion of the South Orchard at Monticello to cultivating cider apples. For Jefferson, Americans’ superior apples were a point of pride for the New World.

A Massachusetts survey of 1790 calculated that every citizen over 15 consumed an annual 34 gallons of beer and cider, five gallons of distilled spirits, and a gallon of wine. To put that in perspective, Americans down an average of 3.8 gallons of alcohol a year, about half of it beer.  Americans drink an average of 44 gallons of soda a year.

Cider vanished from the American landscape during Prohibition, when many cider orchards were burned to the ground by die-hard temperance advocates. Even after the repeal, cider never recovered, although recently has been making a comeback.  Still, cider has only a one percent share in the massive beer market.

I can't help but think, more hard cider and less soda would make us a happier country.