Zelienople library celebrates fall
JACKSON TWP — As Peter Culley squeezed apple pulp into his family’s wooden cider press, he called out to the group of curious children who had begun to gather around him. One after the other, with Culley’s encouragement, they filled paper cups under the spigot, from which the juice, cold and refreshing, flowed freely.
Culley and his wife, Patricia, hauled the equivalent of about six milk crates of apples to Sippel Reservoir Park on Saturday, Sep. 21 for a community event organized by the Zelienople Area Public Library.
A bucket placed under the handcrafted press caught the rest of the apple cider, which the Culleys then siphoned into glass bottles.
Library director Nicole Sloka estimated that over a thousand apples were brought in for cider making, block printing and other activities featured at the ZelienApple Fun Fest, including those from the Culleys’ homestead in Jackson Township.
Each milk crate holds about a bushel of the crispy fall fruit, Peter Culley said, calculating the share of apples he and his wife had brought to the park. He paused briefly, trying to remember the numerical value of a bushel. The consensus among most orchards is that one bushel equates to 42 pounds, which comes out to roughly 120 apples, he said.
“Too much can make your stomach hurt,” Peter Culley warned a group of children gulping down the autumnal drink.
Sloka said the event, which also featured live bunnies and ducks, as well as craft activities, bubbles and a hay ride, was intended to give back to the community.
“We’re trying to keep a healthy homestead kind of focus, with the bunnies and the ducks,” she said. “It did go in that direction, and I’m really happy about that.”
While not the focus of the event, a homegrown theme seemed to emerge from the mix of vendors.
Erin Pearson, a physician and library volunteer instrumental in organizing the event, brought her family’s ducks for children to pet. A friend brought bunnies.
Pearson also tapped other friends for the event, including the Culleys and Maria Kretschmann, a second-generation orchardist and cider maker from Zelienople whose business, After the Fall, specializes in making small batch, organic apple products.
Pearson picked many of the apples featured at the festival herself, making multiple trips with her car to bring them to the event. Some of the apples were harvested at Chatham University’s Eden Hall campus, which Kretschmann has collaborated with in the past. Pearson’s husband, Christopher Murakami, is a professor of agroecology in the university’s food studies program.
She appreciates the homespun feel of Zelienople and the rural communities surrounding the borough.
“The area’s so small,” Kretschmann said. “Everybody knows everybody.”
While Kretschmann describes herself as “super local,” the ZelienApple Fun Fest marks her first event in the area, she said. Outside of Zelienople, she’s a regular vendor at Pittsburgh farmers markets, and has collaborated with North Shore Trinidadian restaurant ShadoBeni in the creation of a hot sauce that uses vegetables and herbs grown by Kretschmann.
The sauce, together with a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic ciders, applesauce and herbal vinegars were available for purchase Saturday.
“I’m, like, totally obsessed with everything coming from my farm,” Kretschmann said.
“What makes me excited is when nature provides you with something and you can just roll with it,” she said.
A few paces away from the vendors, Sloka faced a full playground when she said the event, which brought out dozens of families, was organized with children in mind.
“This was really a give-back for whole families to come because a lot of our fundraisers are adult driven,” she said. “With this, I wanted something for the kids.”
Sloka said organizers wanted an outdoorsy theme at the event.
“We have a scavenger hunt, and it’s asking kids to find things in nature,” she said. “Apples are for everyone. So it was kind of an inclusive idea, and something healthy.”
After a decade of pressing apple cider, drinking it never gets old, Peter Culley said while tilting his cider press.
“We wait 10 months for this,” he said.
Peter and Patricia Culley, who met at Carnegie Mellon University, moved from Pittsburgh’s bustling Lawrenceville neighborhood to a farm in Butler County about 10 years ago. They now live on a homestead out in the country while raising their three children.
While they miss some of Pittsburgh’s cultural offerings, the restaurants and the diversity, Peter Culley said the family is trying to strike a balance between city life and homesteading in Butler County while straddling political and cultural differences.
Patricia Culley, an architect, still works in Pittsburgh and remains connected with life there, her husband said, while he works as a stay-at-home dad, as well as in various construction jobs outside of minding the homestead.
“Sunrise, sunset, the weather, humidity, the changing leaves, the dew and the grass, we’re totally in tune with that,” she said.
Her husband said knowing when to forage for mushrooms or harvest blueberries comes naturally living in the country as opposed to the city.
“I miss the city, but I love what we’re doing,” Peter Culley said.
Apples picked and taken directly to the press produce a quality cider as well, he said.
“It always tastes unbelievably fresh,” Peter Culley said. “It gives you this spiritual connection. It’s just sun, rain, photosynthesis. It’s delicious.”
