Photo by Tom Walker
Annelise Simonsen and Kaleigh Jorgensen
Annelise Simonsen, Director of Operations and Kaleigh Jorgensen, Cidermaker at Creek & Gully Cider.
That’s a question many later generation young farmers ask themselves when they are off the farm in a more urban setting, going to school, working in the hospitality industry, or, like Annelise Simonsen, a popular second hand bookstore in Victoria while she finished her art history degree.
“You know those lines from Elton John ‘I should have stayed on the farm I should have listened to my old man’?” Annelise asks. “Dad was trying to get me to come back to Naramata and he would phone me in Victoria and then hang up,” she chuckles.
“I know a ton about apples, but I am not a farmer, I am a red head who needs to stay covered up and indoors,” she says. But farming is in her blood. Her mother’s family were some of the first to settle in Naramata. When her mother Cyndie, was in university, her father Peter grew vegetables in downtown Vancouver and strawberries in Victoria. “He was an urban farmer before the term was invented,” Annelise points out.
The Simonsen family have run the 85 acre organic Northern Lights Orchard on the Naramata bench for the past 35 years. Specializing in apples pears and peaches, brother Kevin farms with their dad Peter and Cyndie has just retired from a 30 year teaching career.
Annelise met Kaleigh Jorgensen, a Saskatchewan transplant, when the two were working at Joy Road Catering in Penticton. “I swear I only introduced her to my brother for 3 seconds and now she’s my sister in-law.” she jokes. Making cider in the Simonsen’s garage was a natural progression for their food and orchard backgrounds and a lot of it was good.
“My dad knew we were pretty good at making cider so he suggested we try it as a business” says Annelise. The first move was cider school in Washington state. “We took some of our cider down with us and everyone liked it.”
“Our classmates were saying you need to do this for real,” Kaleigh adds. “We were going to get a Quonset hut and make a bunch of keg stuff for our restaurant neighbours, but by the time we drove home we had hatched this entire plan.”
And it isn’t a Quonset hut. The pair designed a Scandinavian style cider house. “It was a bit of an issue with the Penticton planning department,” says Annelise. “At first, they weren’t happy that the building has no over-hangs but it has a super tight rain shield and is really well insulated.” They broke ground last October and were able to move apples in for their first pressing in March.
Creek & Gully Ciderhouse
Outside view of the Scandinavian style ciderhouse.
“We found a niche, says Annelise, who is director of operations for the cidery. “I didn’t know how I was going to participate in the farm otherwise.”
It is definitely a succession plan, cider maker Kaleigh adds. “We really wanted to keep this tradition going and find an economically feasible way to do it and use all of our skills.”
With the price of orchard land in the Okanagan, it simply is not feasible to be on your own, Kaleigh points out. And those who can afford to buy the land will sometimes take it out of farming. “So this becomes a simulacrum of a beautiful place, instead of an active and thriving economy.”
The cidery diversifies income while adding value to less than perfect fruit. “The aesthetics of fresh fruit are so intense,” Kaleigh points out. “So now instead of the Cawston packing house juicing our culls, we are able to get them back ourselves and use them.” Cider is the main product, but this season they have featured a peach apple nectar, using sunburned peaches.
And while the orchard grows the current commercial varieties like Ambrosia, Honeycrisp and Pink Lady, the business partners have some secret weapons scattered amongst the higher density plantings. “We have some trees from the early 1900’s that have been grafted over, as well as older varieties like Newtowns,” says Kaleigh.
“So we blend a lot,” says Annelise, noting they have planted some cider specific varieties.
“The older trees really support the microbial community in the orchard,” says Kaleigh. “That is a key for us with our natural fermentation process. We do not add commercial yeast to our initial ferment.”
The cidery produces two styles at this time, Kaleigh explains. Pet Nat., short for the French term petillant natural or “naturally sparkling” is barrel fermented down to a certain level of residual sugar, popped into a bottle and finishes fermentation under pressure in the bottle creating bubbles.
They also do a traditional style, fermenting the juice until the residual sugar is gone. A yeast and sugar starter is added back to restart the fermentation process and again the ferment is finished in the bottle.
Temperature and racking do allow for some control, but this is very much a natural process Kaleigh emphasizes. “It requires a lot more to let go and let it do it’s own thing, rather than decide what you want it to taste like in the very beginning, wipe out the existing microbial colonies and put something in there that will make it behave very predictably.”
Creek & Gully Cider
Inside of the Scandinavian style ciderhouse.
Production this year was 1600 cases and they are looking to expand that by half each year for the next three. “It’s a hands on discovery for us and I don’t want to lose that,” says Kaleigh. “We have an opportunity to showcase the terroir of our apples, while we are caretakers of the natural fermentation, constantly watching and tasting along the way.”
Kaleigh turns to the veteran farmer Peter to put their optimism in perspective
“The thing Peter always says about farming is that every year you get to start from zero at the beginning of the season,” she says. “So what ever happened last year, the trees are going to be there and it is exciting to have a new season to do different things, to learn and grow over time.”