Butler Township family continues tradition of making apple butter
A bubbling black cauldron tended on Friday by a pair of experienced sisters on a limestone lane in Butler Township had nothing to do with Halloween.
The 25-gallon copper pot that dated to at least 1930 was full of brown applesauce that the Kelly/Mangel family spent all day turning into apple butter.
Virginia Mangel has been making apple butter outdoors over an open wood fire every fall since her late mother, Verna Kelly, and family friend Katherine Barnhart taught her how to do it 55 years ago as an activity of the Unionville Grange.
“Katherine taught me the same thing my mother taught me, and that’s get out there and work,” Virginia said of the long and involved process of making apple butter.
She explained that she and other family members quartered 10 bushel of honeycrisp, Macintosh and yellow delicious apples in April.
The apple pieces were then partially cooked in water in an outdoor turkey fryer until they were soft enough to go through the “Squeezo,” which is a machine that pulverizes the apples and strains out the skin and seeds.
“That’s another day’s work,” said Virginia’s husband, Dick Mangel.
Mangel then froze the resulting applesauce in 27 containers.
She planned to make the apple butter on Saturday, but the weather forecast of 100% rain moved the family-focused project back to Friday.
So under a sunny autumn sky, the men in the Mangel family took turns stirring the sweet, simmering slurry over in the yard beside the garage on the family’s property off Crisswell Road.
The “stirring stick,” as the Mangels call it, is a sturdy 8-foot-long wooden pole with a paddle connected to the end at a right angle.
The designated stirrer sits in a lawn chair at the end of the pole so as to remain away from the smoke and flames under the pot, and pushes the paddle back and forth constantly to stir the gurgling contents.
Jeff Campbell, Virginia Mangel’s brother-in-law, took a turn stirring the applesauce on Friday.
He prefers to spread his apple butter on a toasted and buttered English muffin.
“I put my last pint in the refrigerator three weeks ago, so it’s perfect timing,” he said, never breaking the rhythm of the stirring paddle in the steaming applesauce.
As the applesauce is stirred — usually by the men in the family — the preparers joke with one another or nosh on a picnic lunch set up on the tailgate of a nearby pickup truck.
“We’re going to cook off in the neighborhood of 150 pints,” Virginia said. “We started the fire at 6 a.m.”
The sweet substance was cooked down until 3 p.m. to ensure all the moisture had evaporated, then Virginia and her sister, Shirley Kimmel, dumped in 15 to 20 pounds of white sugar, 10 pounds of brown sugar, and 4 ounces, or so, of cinnamon.
Kimmel traveled from her home in Pasadena, Md., to help out with the apple butter.
“This has been a tradition in the family for decades,” Virginia said. “We enjoy the fellowship, the friendship and the family.”
“And the good taste of homemade apple butter,” Dick interjected.
After the sweeteners were sufficiently stirred in, 150 pint jars were prepared to receive the hot apple butter. The heat seals the jar lids instantly.
“I do the jarring part,” said Kelly Ruggles, Virginia’s daughter and next-door neighbor. “Whatever Virginia says is what we do.”
She recalled her parents and aunts and uncles making apple butter when she was a child.
“We weren’t allowed close to the fire, so we’d taste it after it was jarred,” she said. “I remember taste testing it.”
Ruggles said although she enjoys the apple butter, she does not plan to continue the tradition.
“I’ll keep the kettle,” she said.
She does admire her parents’ generation, who she said never seem to sit down and rest.
“They don’t act their age, that’s for sure,” Ruggles said.
The family also recalled setting up nine copper pots along Brugh Avenue in Butler every autumn, when their church, then St. Paul United Church of Christ, held an apple butter-making event in years past.
“Rain, shine, snow or whatever, we did it,” Dick said.
The apple butter made at the Mangel property on Friday will be given away to family and friends, and stored so more is available when someone runs out.
Virginia said she and Ruggles also make hard tack candy each December, which they sell to those who order it.
“We make upward of 30 to 35 pounds,” Virginia said.
“That, I might continue with my cousin,” Ruggles said.
Virginia laments that in years gone by, apple butter could be seen and smelled cooking all around the county.
“Fifteen or 20 years ago, a lot of organizations and families did it,” she said. “Now, I think it’s just us.”
