Get Juiced at Sebastopol’s Community Apple Press

Come one, come all. Come press your apples at the Community Apple Press at the Luther Burbank Gold Ridge Experiment Farm in Sebastopol this apple season. For free!

Have a backyard full of apples? Someone else’s backyard full? Or a real deal on a bushel’s worth? Gleaning a few? Bring ’em all. Or buy some on the way at local roadside stands, farmers’ markets or even at a store. It’ll be the best juice you ever tasted.

Community pressing has been offered at Sonoma’s Olive Press and Petaluma’s McEvoy Ranch for several years, where anyone can bring olives from one tree or a whole orchard and take back olive oil in proportion to what you brought in, but never before for apples.

And who do we have to thank for this unique and wonderful opportunity? Slow Food Russian River, a local chapter of Slow Food, the international organization that was founded in 1989 to “counteract fast food and fast life,” according to its website.

Slow Food Russian River is an extraordinarily active and successful chapter of Slow Food whose activities showcase and support good, clean and fair agriculture and food in Sonoma County. The group’s wide range of offerings include a monthly book group, a summer film series and education through its website, blog, newsletter and social media outreach. The organization has also spearheaded important long-term projects including local school gardens, the Gravenstein Apple Presidium and the Heritage Turkey Project in partnership with 4-H.

WHY SEBASTOPOL?

Because Sebastopol, with all of its current political progressiveness, also once produced a huge crop of Gravenstein apples, now on Slow Food’s “endangered list.”

The history of apple growing in our area is long and storied, beginning around 1811 when Russian explorers planted apples and other crops around Fort Ross.

Mitchell Gilliam and his son-in-law, Isaac Sullivan, arrived in what is now Graton, known then as Green Valley, in the 1850s and planted a 150-tree apple orchard with stock they bought in Petaluma for $1.50 per tree. After the trees began to yield apples, the pair sold fruit door-to-door in a horse-drawn wagon.

Around the same time, many others in the area were beginning to plant apple trees as well, launching Sebastopol to a national reputation for its apples. All kinds of apples, but it was and is the Gravenstein that holds a special place in Sebastopol’s apple lore.

Nathaniel Griffith, called the “Grandfather of the Gravenstein” locally, planted his orchard off Laguna Road in 1883 and worked with renowned plant breeder and grafter Luther Burbank to develop the distinctive apple, recognized by its yellowish undercoating, naturally decorated with orange and red striping, although several other people and even countries claim its origin. In fact, Denmark claims it as a “native,” discovered in 1669 in Grasten in South Jutland. In 2005, the country’s Food Minister proclaimed the Gravenstein to be the “national apple” of Denmark. In the early 19th century, Charles Ramage Prescott grew the first Canadian Gravensteins in his orchard at Acacia Grove and became the father of the Nova Scotian apple industry.

But there’s no disputing Western Sonoma County’s illustrious place in apple growing history. When early area pioneer Thomas Barlow died at the age of 34, he left his widow with six children and 600 acres planted to apples and blackberries in Green Valley. Mrs. Barlow continued her husband’s ranching enterprise after his death, and two of their sons launched the applesauce canning industry in the area in 1939. Hence, The Barlow commercial development in downtown Sebastopol that includes an old canning shed and many metal buildings designed to resemble canning buildings.

Like many of the immigrant farmers pouring into the area, enterprising Swedes John and Neta Hallberg settled on 40 acres near Sebastopol, planted apple trees and built one of the first apple dryers in California. The Hallbergs’ dryer burned down in 1905. In fact, all but 15 of the estimated 101 local dryers operating during this period burned to the ground eventually. Apparently this was not a finite science.

By the 1890s, locals had also planted wine grapes in the area, after learning how well Agostón Haraszthy’s winery was going in Sonoma (now Jean-Charles Boisset’s Buena Vista Winery).

In 1910, the Sebastopol Apple Growers Union started the Sebastopol Gravenstein Apple Show, now called the Gravenstein Apple Fair and still held every August. In “the good ol’ days,” the whole community chipped in to make float-like sculptures decorated entirely with apples, somewhat like floats covered with flowers for Pasadena’s Rose Parade. Apple-covered structures ranged from buildings and local landmarks to a depiction of the ocean liner Titanic.

By 1911, Sebastopol-area Gravenstein apple growers were shipping 100,000 tons or 500 rail carloads of apples, progressing to an added 18,000 tons of dried fruit, cider and vinegar made from apples by 1919, according to the Western Sonoma County Historical Society. A full wooden box would sell for somewhere between $2.35 and $2.75 at the time.