If you’re tired of your desk job, Steve Bridge has a business opportunity you might like. At 62, he’s retiring from a family tradition that’s been going for more than 30 years - turning Virginia apples into sweet, spicy butter.
A half dozen shiny steel cookers, the size of washing machines, are bubbling here in the Augusta Community Cannery - a building that went up beside the old high school during the second world war. In those days, Americans had victory gardens, and students learned to can as part of vocational education. Today, Steve Bridge keeps the place smelling sweet. From late August through early November, he’ll turn 1,200 bushels of apples into jars of dark brown apple butter.
“This machine takes the seeds out of it, and you don’t have to peel all the apples. I put sugar and spice in it. Everybody pretty much has their own recipe, but I tell people, give me enough cinnamon and sugar and I’ll make any apple taste good.”
He does remove stems and the fuzzy blooms at the bottom of golden delicious, gala or whatever is cheap and available. It’s a tradition that dates back to early German communities where autumn meant good times around making apple butter.
“They’d get together for two or three days, peel, slice, and then take all day to make it, so they got a chance to be together before the winter set in.”
Today, Bridge supplies churches and not for profits with something to sell at their fall fundraisers, and sadly - he says - this will be his last year.
“I got two new knees in March, and if I’m going to wear them out, I’m gonna’ be in the mountains, not on this concrete floor. Are you tired of apple butter, after … Oh no, I’m not tired of doing this. If you gotta’ do something, you might as well do this I guess.”
And it leaves time for a few other things he’s been doing in retirement.
“Just hunt and cut wood and farm and cut grass, coach basketball at the high school. Other than that, I don’t do much.”
So if the gig sounds good to you, give a call to Augusta County. Come apple season next year, the business of making apple butter could be yours.
