Traditions
Generations of a Missouri family gather to make apple butter for a good cause.
Come October, it’s time to make apple butter!
Needs some more cinnamon! You’ll hear that a lot on a certain Saturday in October when the Winston and Guier families and their friends get together to make apple butter.
On Winston Apple Butter Day, five generations of cousins (I’m a second cousin on my mother’s side) make this spreadable delight (it’s wonderful on biscuits, bread and other baked goods) and cider to raise money for Blackwater Chapel, a Methodist church in Pettis County, Missouri.
Family patriarch Wayne Winston started the fall tradition 40 years ago and passed it on to the next generation. Today the apple buttermaking is overseen by Wayne’s
daughter Helen Cunningham at the farm of another daughter’s grandson, Greg Guier.
In the beginning, all apples were peeled by hand. Nowadays, the apple butter is started with 48 gallons of donated applesauce divided into two 24-gallon copper kettles (one is over 100 years old).
Cousins take turns stirring, and at around noon, about 15 pounds of sugar are added to each kettle. The exact amount is decided by the official taste testers—any cousins nearest the kettles at tasting time!
Helen adds cinnamon and Red Hots (shh...this candy is the secret ingredient) at different times throughout the process. The Red Hots give just the right buzz of cinnamon. After several more hours of constant stirring, the mixture is finally declared “apple butter” and scooped into waiting canning jars to be sold at the Lord’s Acre Sale in November.
Almost everyone helps out. As the older cousins watch the apple butter (last year eight of them were over the age of 80), the younger cousins load apples and some pears (added for sweetness) into the crusher to begin making cider.
Cousin Nelson Guier oversees the cider. After being crushed, the apple mixture is transferred to a cider press. Then the juice is poured through cheesecloth into a 5-gallon
spigoted bucket. Other cousins drain the fresh cider into clean jugs. Meanwhile, the youngest cousins play on the hay bales, chase cats and ride the “barrel train.”
In between all the work, cousins and friends eat a potluck barbecue lunch and visit with each other. Though the day may be sunny, rainy, cold or breezy (we take it as it comes), there’s a lot of warmth in the air. As the jokes and stories fly, the Winston and Guier families stay connected.
Though the day may be sunny, rainy, cold or breezy…there’s a lot of warmth in the air.