Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 23, 1995                   TAG: 9510230153
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MABRY MILL                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOR APPLES, IT CAN'T GET MUCH BETTER THAN THIS

\ If you've ever had a homemade biscuit smothered with it, you know why it's worth the trouble.

Apple butter.

The Appalachian tradition that's made in the big copper pot.

At Floyd County's crowded Mabry Mill on Sunday afternoon, a 40-gallon kettle was grabbing a lot of attention.

Under it smoldered several logs of locust wood. Inside it, a rust-red concoction made of 40 gallons of applesauce and 30 pounds of sugar had been brewing since 7 a.m.

Sue Hill, one of eight volunteers making the apple butter, dipped her finger into a sample and did a quick taste test.

Sweet, yes, but there was still a little water on the outside - a sign that it needed to cook a few hours longer. A while later, a quarter-ounce of cinnamon oil would be dropped into the pot as the final ingredient.

Why cinnamon oil instead of plain ol' cinnamon powder?

"Powdered cinnamon gets bitter after a while," Hill said.

While Hill was assessing the unfinished product, Valerie Housman, another volunteer, was rocking back and forth, stirring the apple butter in the pot with a long paddle made of poplar wood. The paddle - also known as a "horse" because of its shape - is made of poplar because it's the type of wood that has no oils or fragrance, something that could upset the taste of a batch of apple butter.

The paddle the volunteers use was made by Phipps "Festus" Bourne, the blacksmith at Mabry Mill. He gave it a special handle so the volunteers can use their legs more than their arms.

"I tell ya," Hill said, "it's a lot harder to see that water on the edges when you've been stirring a pot of apple butter for 12 hours."

Hill was busy answering the crowd's questions about the process.

Housman was doing the same while stirring.

"How much you think that pot would go for," asked an observer. "I just sold one of those things for $100."

This one's worth about $800," Housman told the man.

"I know one thing, that man got taken," whispered a woman in the crowd.

The $800 pot is the property of the Blue Ridge Parkway service, bought several years ago so apple butter could be made at Mabry Mill, one of the most popular stops on the parkway.

Initially, the owners of a restaurant at Mabry Mill made the apple butter and sold it. But a law was passed that makes it illegal to sell products on federal land that have been made in the open air.

Without a way to profit from making apple butter, the restaurateurs stopped doing it.

So, in stepped Hill, who hails from Bent Mountain in Roanoke County. She was visiting Mabry Mill several years ago and asked a park ranger why apple butter wasn't being made anymore.

The ranger told her that volunteers couldn't be found.

Thus was born the Blue Ridge Parkway Friends, a group of 12 who have been making apple butter for five years - six times each year on successive Sundays.

Sunday - a bright and cloudless day along a busy parkway - was their last appearance this year.

Mabry Mill Apple Butter can be purchased at several spots off the Parkway and at Wertz's Country Store on the Roanoke City Market.

Hill said the group rarely breaks even after expenses and the time it takes to make the apple butter.

To Hill, a recently retired probation officer, that's not a problem. She's just an apple butter fan.

You could even call her an apple butter historian.

She knows that the National Library of Congress has no literature on apple butter. However, she knows a few apple butter stories of her own.

For instance, she said, in the old days, couples weren't allowed to hold hands while they were dating.

But if a couple could stir the apple butter pot together and make the kettle "ring like a bell," they could go ahead and kiss in public.

And Appalachian families gathered each fall to cook apple butter. They divided it up according to how many members each family had.

Said Hill: "They could make it through the winter on apple products and chestnuts."