By The talk was Monday evening. Forty people in the Hinesburg Community Center meeting room, which seats forty-five, which means they pushed the chairs close together and the back row was standing. I had not expected forty people. Helen told me to expect forty. I should have expected forty; my wife is never wrong about these things.
I was nervous in a way I have not been since my first day of teaching in September 1977. I was twenty-four then, and I stood in front of thirty sophomores who looked at me with the healthy skepticism teenagers bring to everything, and I thought: I know this material, I know why it matters, just begin. It worked then. It worked Monday.
I talked for fifty minutes about the history of maple sugaring in Chittenden County — from the Abenaki techniques the settlers learned and rarely gave adequate credit for, through the nineteenth century when small family operations like ours were the backbone of Vermont's agricultural economy, to the twentieth century and my grandfather's account books. I brought the 1921 book and passed it around. People touched it carefully, the way you touch something that carries time in its pages.
The questions ran long. A woman in the third row was writing a paper on microclimate variations in the Champlain Valley and had questions that would have required another hour. I told her to come by the sugarhouse in March. She said she would. She might.
I made maple candy for everyone — the hard candy, poured into my grandmother's molds: small maple leaves, large stars, two shapes I have never definitively identified. I made sixty pieces the day before. They were gone in ten minutes. A woman stopped me afterward and said the candy tasted exactly the way her grandmother's tasted and she had not had it since she was eight years old. She said it without particular emotion, just as a fact. I understood that kind of fact completely.
Helen said I was animated during the talk in a way she had not seen since I stopped teaching. I said that was the subject matter. She said I was not giving myself enough credit. I said I was giving the trees the credit. She said that was the most Bergstrom sentence I had ever spoken. It probably was.
I got home after ten o’clock that night, still talking faster than usual, Helen laughing at me a little, and I wanted something that asked nothing of me — something I could set going and simply let work. I had started a slow cooker of apple cider before we left, and the house smelled like October when we walked in. It seemed right: the evening had been about patience and long processes and things passed down carefully, and a slow cooker of cider is exactly that kind of thing. If you are ever fortunate enough to spend an evening talking about what you love, this is what you should come home to.
Slow Cooker Apple Cider
Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 3 hours | Total Time: 3 hours 10 minutes | Servings: 8
Ingredients
- 1 gallon fresh apple cider
- 3 cinnamon sticks
- 1 teaspoon whole cloves
- 1 teaspoon whole allspice berries
- 1 orange, sliced into rounds
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar (or to taste)
- 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Instructions
- Combine. Pour the apple cider into a 5- or 6-quart slow cooker. Add the cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, allspice berries, orange slices, brown sugar, and nutmeg.
- Cook. Cover and cook on LOW for 2 to 3 hours, or on HIGH for 1 to 2 hours, until the cider is fragrant and heated through.
- Strain. Use a fine-mesh strainer or ladle through a strainer to remove the whole spices and orange slices before serving.
- Serve. Ladle into mugs and serve warm. Garnish with a fresh cinnamon stick or a thin orange slice if desired. Keep on WARM for up to 2 additional hours for gatherings.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 145 | Protein: 0g | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 36g | Fiber: 0g | Sodium: 15mg