Loss of Tradition

America has a puritanical instinct which at times has enjoyed periods of success, none more powerful then the anti-alcohol movement resulting in Prohibition. Because of the ban on alcohol the tradition of home-brewing was severed and many of the ties to our historic diet and agricultural traditions were lost. Where we once were a people who understood how food ended up on our plates, we now see agriculture as a specialists' occupation similar to the way we see technology: We look to "certain people" to provide us with computers and we look to "certain people" to provide us food. (Let that sink in.)
Same is true with drink. We once not only understood how our glasses were full, we participated and shaped fruit cultivation by bringing mills our home-grown fruit. Apples were among the only fruit hardy enough to grow in the populated Northeast, thus cider became the main American beverage for 300 years prior to Prohibition. Pride-in-ownership and taste preferences inspired hundreds of thousands of Americans to grow apples on their property, and eventually tens of thousand of apple cultivars gave our country regional cider fame, like wine to France.
In so many ways we lost touch with our dietary and agricultural traditions during the 20th century. Ask most Americans and they think 'fermented' is a bad thing; they don't even realize beer and wine, which they like, undergoes fermentation in a process resulting in alcohol. After Prohibition, we let Budweiser and Miller Beer do the alcoholic beverage thinking for us. The traditions of the past are so severed that few of us are even interested in discovering what we ate and drank in the days before trucks, trains and refrigeration. With cider we are left to look toward France and England, who had not suffered a forcible ban on alcohol, so that we may imagine what our country would be like if it were not for Prohibition. Ironically, our Mother-Country, the country we rebelled against, has upheld the traditions of our past. England, with their "cideries" and "scrumpy" can help us get back on our feet in terms of cider production. Across the Atlantic, cider traditions have been continued and have evolved while we slumbered the duration on the 20th century. They have brought cider and cider-apple growing techniques to the 21st century and we now need to use their cider practices to bridge the divide from our dietary past.

More on less sprays

Every inch of earth around us is combed over by an animal. Be it a squirrel, bird, rabbit, or whatever- not a single blade of grass is skipped over. I know this from our geese who keep 1,000 square feet of grass PERFECTLY mowed. Yet as I see weeds shoot up in my garden, like most Americans, I compulsively think of an easy solution for weed-killing. What about those geese!?! How can I lay down a chemical when I can be 100% sure that if my geese stumble across that area they will ingest the poison? This is what RoundUp and other weed-killers don't want you to do: put two and two together and think of animals as you picture your garden. But is it just for "our" animals that we don't spray? Are the only animals we care about pets? Of course not. But it helps to think of all the world's animals as pets when we consider, amongst other reasons, why we should avoid easy chemical weed-killers.

"CIDER" the word

"Cider" is to apple juice, what "Wine" is to grape juice. And even in America prior to WWII, the word "cider" was held to exclusively describe the fermented drink produced from the juice of apples. This fresh juice however has recently become known as "cider" here in America, rather then the fermented drink, because farmers sought a way to market their superior juice over the artificially sweetened "apple juice" that one sees in quick-marts and gas stations. My sympathies go out to them, but even those farmers know "cider" is in fact a fermented drink. There is no questioning that- just do some historical and international research on cider and you'll be embarrassed for our country's use of the word. You'll also be embarrassed that you have little knowledge and experience with one of the worlds best fermented drinks. Only wine rivals cider's complexity, diversity and subtlety.
Why not concede to the confusion and just call it "hard cider?" I do not like the term, "hard cider," because to me it is suggestive of "hard drinking." That would also suggest the general purpose of quantity- not quality. Hard cider, in fact, does carry negative associations in modern day America. It is often associated with young or sloppy home-brewers who lack the funds, knowledge, patience, and hygiene to perfect their craft. Their product is likely to carry sickness-causing bacteria and it's often"spiked" for increased alcohol. If getting drunk for cheap were the mission, "hard" cider has fit that niche.
But there is a cure. With the resurgence of micro-brewing in the beer industry, modern day drinking Americans have divided into two camps: their approach can generally be summed as 'quantity vs. quality'. (Interesting that the wine industry never saw the dark ages between prohibition and the 21st century which degraded the beer industry and nearly obliterated all cider production in America.) Buyers of good beer know that taste matters more then penny-pinching. My hope is that cider can also be resuscitated in this improved market. Is it elitist, is it classist -to let the two camps divide among seemingly economic means? Not at all. Taste, despite what the elitists tell you, is not bought. And anyone who knows economics, especially the economy of "local", will also know that the ramifications of buying for quality effects personal finance in a cyclical manner. In other words, buying for quality effects the quality of the broader local market to which you support. The British, who coincidentally are also the worlds premier cider drinkers, have a phrase: Penny wise, pound foolish.