10/10/2026
Growing up in the Duluth-Superior area, apple season has always been a part of fall for me.
Whether I was living in town or out in the country, there was always something about that time of year. Bayfield Apple Festival, trips to the orchards, apples showing up in grocery stores and roadside stands, and that familiar feeling that fall was really here.
Apples have always been part of the landscape of this place.
But it wasn't until my first year working at the Food Farm in Wrenshall that I was introduced to the tradition of pressing apple c***r.
And that's where I met Duluth's very own C***r Man, Paul.
The Food Farm had a longstanding tradition of pressing c***r with Paul every fall. There were a few apple trees out near the chicken yard, and throughout the season those apples would get picked and tucked away in the root cellar.
Then, on the first weekend of November, after the harvest was finished and the farm was finally winding down for the year, we'd load up those apples and head into Duluth.
Paul had a big c***r press set up at his house in East Duluth, and he had a process.
Oh, did he have a process.
And one of the things I always found particularly entertaining was watching Janaki, who had his own very established ways of doing things at the farm, have to surrender to someone else's process for the day.
It was always a little funny, and a little delightful.
But Paul knows his apples.
Throughout the late summer and fall, he travels around Duluth picking apples from trees all over town. By the time c***r pressing rolls around, his garage is filled with boxes and boxes of different varieties.
And then came the blending.
Paul would taste an apple. Think about it. Walk back into the garage and taste another. Think some more.
Then he would start directing us to pull out certain boxes, lining them up in the alley in the order he wanted them.
A little of this one. More of that one. Something tart. Something sweet.
And eventually, once he'd settled on his blend, we'd start grinding and pressing.
There's something really wonderful about watching a bunch of completely different apples come together into something that tastes so much better than any one of them might have on its own.
And the c***r was always so good.
Near the end of pressing, Annie sometimes brought along thawed raspberries, and we'd make a few very special jugs of raspberry apple c***r.
We marked those jugs with an R.
And oh, those were something else.
Some years that first week in November was absolutely freezing. Other years we lucked out with a beautiful fall day. But regardless of the weather, we gathered in Paul's alley, worked through the apples, and made c***r.
It became one of those things I looked forward to every year.
And over the years, I got to know Paul beyond just our annual c***r pressing.
He was around the farm for other things, too. He came out for chicken and turkey processing, and he also happened to be an incredibly talented homebrewer.
He brought banana crates filled with his b**r, often recipes he'd been working on to recreate some favorite microbrews.
Technically, it was Janaki's stash.
But I have some very fond memories of those long, hot summer days at the farm, when we'd finish working and, if we felt like it, head back out to pick a bucket of beans.
Sometimes we'd grab one of Paul's b**rs and take it along.
A cold b**r, a bucket of beans, and the evening settling in after a long day of work.
Those are good memories.
And Paul's b**r was really, really good.
I haven't pressed c***r with Paul in quite a few years now, but as I got to know him better, I occasionally helped him pick apples around Duluth or came over to help press a smaller batch of c***r.
I got to bring a couple jugs home, sometimes a few six-packs of b**r, and always ended up making deliveries.
Because that was another part of Paul's process.
We'd finish pressing, and he'd start figuring out where the c***r needed to go.
A few jugs to a house down the sidewalk. One to the people whose tree we picked. Another to someone a few blocks away. Someone else would be stopping by to pick theirs up.
And I loved that.
I still do.
Because there is something really beautiful about the whole thing. Apples growing in people's yards all over Duluth, collected by someone who knows what to do with them, blended together, pressed, and then shared back out into the neighborhood.
It isn't just about making c***r.
It's about people.
And somewhere along the way, that became part of how I thought about c***r pressing, too.
For a few years, I had garden plots through the Duluth Community Garden Program. I started gardening there with Brit, who had also been an intern at the Food Farm, and I kept plots for several seasons.
When I was working in town, I'd sometimes run over on my lunch break to pull weeds or pick vegetables.
I loved having that little piece of ground to grow things, even when I wasn't living somewhere I could have the kind of garden I wanted.
And one of the wonderful things about the Duluth Community Garden Program is that they have a large c***r press available to rent.
Eventually, I started thinking about all the apples growing around our own neighborhood here in Poplar.
The trees down the road. The apples people weren't using. The ones I'd hear about through farmers markets or find by putting a post on the Poplar People page asking whether anyone had extra apples.
And a couple of years ago, I rented that press and made c***r here at Berg Park Farm.
I went around collecting apples, just like I'd watched Paul do for years.
I tasted them. Thought about their flavors. Figured out which ones were sweet, which were tart, and which ones would bring something different to the blend.
And I put together my own mix.
My own tailored c***r blend, made from apples growing right here in our little corner of the world.
And it was so, so good.
And of course, once the c***r was pressed, I started figuring out where the jugs needed to go.
Some went right back to the neighbors who had shared their apples with me.
And honestly, that might be my favorite part of the whole process.
There's something about showing up at someone's door with a jug of fresh c***r, knowing that some of the apples in it came from the tree growing in their own yard.
It's such a simple exchange, but I love everything about it.
And somewhere in the middle of making those deliveries, I realized I was doing exactly what I'd watched Paul do all those years ago.
Different neighborhood. Different apples. Same wonderful tradition.
There's something especially satisfying about that. Taking what you've learned over the years, carrying it home with you, and making it your own.
Which brings me to this fall.
I've rented the Duluth Community Garden c***r press for the last week of October, and I've already started gathering apples.
Some from our own trees, and now ready to find some from around the neighborhood.
And I'm really looking forward to pressing again this season.
I think about all the years that have passed since I first stood in Paul's alley, watching him taste apples and decide which boxes we needed to pull out next.
I think about those freezing November mornings, the raspberry c***r marked with an R, the banana crates of b**r, and picking beans after a long summer day.
I think about all those little deliveries around Duluth, and how much joy there was in bringing someone a jug of c***r made, in part, from the apples growing in their own yard.
And now here I am, years later, collecting apples from the people around me and getting ready to do the same thing on our farm.
There's something really lovely about how these things come full circle.
The people we meet, the things they teach us, and the traditions we carry forward, sometimes without even realizing that's what we're doing.
And I think that's one of my favorite things about growing food, preserving it, and making things from what's available around us.
It's never just about the food.
It's about the people and places that become part of the story.
And sometimes, if you're lucky, you get to carry a little piece of that story forward.
One apple, one jug of c***r, and one fall at a time.
