Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 14, 1993 TAG: 9310130334
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY BELL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
One chops apples. Another operates a device that separates fruit from the parts the cows will eat. Blue flames lick the bottoms of a row of pressure cookers, while a motorized paddle stirs the bubbling contents of the 40-gallon kettle. The air is steamy and sweet-smelling. Wisps of hair escape the women's bonnets. Their faces perspire.
The Hubbard family makes apple butter the old-fashioned way.
From sunup to sunset, four days a week from late summer to late fall, Janie Hubbard makes apple butter the way it has been made for generations with the help of her children and grandchildren.
"People say Mother's apple butter is the best around," says Ann DeMaury, Hubbard's daughter.
For at least 10 years, the family has canned enough apple butter to fill a tractor-trailer. It is sold in pints, quarts and gallons to restaurants, stores and neighbors. Apple-butter profits help sustain the family's 113-acre cattle farm.
Janie Hubbard rises early during apple-butter season. From 6 a.m. until evening, she manages the family's apple-butter operation. Other family members pitch in with various aspects of a makeshift production line they have assembled in the basement of their home,just outside Daleville.
The Hubbards fill about 4,000 quart jars each year, using hundreds of pounds of sugar, several hundred dollars' worth of seasoning oils and about four 20-bushel bins of Golden Delicious apples a week. The family also produces a sugar-free apple butter, sweetened with cider instead of sugar.
It's hard work, but family patriarch Sam Hubbard modernized the process a while back by designing several motors. One stirs the apple butter as it cooks all day, freeing the women to perform other tasks. A second motor powers a strainer.
"When I was a child, we had to stir it by hand," DeMaury remembers.
She says the family didn't make as much apple butter in those days, but the work was harder.
DeMaury's school-aged children help label and seal the jars after they get home from school.
"The children enjoy the work. It is good for them," she says.
The Hubbards will make apple butter until every order is filled, usually in mid-November. Family members take turns delivering jars to customers. The men haul apples and deliver large orders.
DeMaury says the number of orders the family receives increases each year. Their largest customer, The Homeplace Restaurant, buys 300 gallons annually and recently began offering small quantities for sale to customers.
The family also supplies apple butter to country stores and orchards. Occasionally, a neighbor slips in the back door to buy a jar or two for personal use.
"We've had requests for our apple butter from all over the country, but we don't do mail-order," Janie Hubbard says.
"We'll keep making as much of it as we can as long as people like it," she says.
Hubbard's apple butter sells for $4.35 a quart and $3.35 a pint, a slight reduction for wholesale.
Hubbard apple butter can be ordered by calling 992-2187.
by CNB