Let’s talk about the term “farmer” for a minute.  I’ve thrown it out there, so let’s kick it around.

My grandparents were farmers.  It was an indisputable fact.  They ran the Maine breeding co-op and had cows, bulls, horses, a mean and nasty goose that would terrify and chase young children whenever it got the chance.  I mean, really terrify a poor kid to the point where just having to walk through the farm yard while they were visiting would cause pee-your-pants-level anxiety but he would be too scarred and embarrassed to tell anyone he was afraid of the goose because it was just a stupid bird, never-mind the fact that it was actually a bird nearly as tall as the little boy and everyone knows birds are pretty much the same as dinosaurs, so really was he a little pansy for being afraid of being chased by a dinosaur?  No, I don’t think so.

Yes, my mother’s parents were farmers.   No argument there.

I do not want to be a cattle or dairy farmer.  I want to plant a vineyard and an orchard and I want to make wine and cider.  Now, you could choose to define this avocation as vintner or a, um, an….

Google has failed me.  Evidently there is not a proper name for a place or a person who makes cider.  Brewers make beer in a brewery.  Vintners make wine in a winery and they grow grapes in a vineyard.  But nobody has a name for a cider maker?  How is that even possible?  We have names for everything – some of these professions have even become actual surnames. For example, a person who makes barrels is called “Cooper.”  In Italian they refer to a seller of fennel “Finnocchiaro.”  In Texas, they call someone who makes interceptions “Romo.” But I can’t find anything for someone who makes cider.

The process of making cider is much closer to the process of making wine than it is beer, but at a boots on the ground, drinking it by the pint level, cider seems closer to a beer product than wine, so it’s hard to say whether to lean toward vintner or brewer.  Maybe I’ll call it a cider mill and refer to a cider maker as, let’s say, ciderer.  No, that’s not cool.  Menter.  You know, from fermenter?  I’ll work on that one and get back to you.

Anyway, so you could call what I want to do being a vintner and you could call the farm a vineyard, but that presents two problems.  First, it sounds sort of pretentious for this blog.  I mean, when we get to the point of actually selling wine, sure, we’ll probably have to call it a vineyard.  But for now, I’d like to stick with farmer.  Second, I want other more farmy type things.  Chickens.  Goats.  More dogs than we should really have.  That sort of thing.

But in the spirit of farming, here is a selfie of me getting photobombed by a cow.