Spring Planting and Summer Drinking
Dr. G. G. Wilkins goes through a Suncook Valley farmer's year, from planting corn by squirrel-ear oak leaves to the haying-field switchel jug and the cider barrel that turns hard by May, with a still kept honest on the side. Master coppersmith Silas 'Hacksaw' McAllister comes on with new stories from the planting and haying months, and Wilkins answers Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller's voicemail about hickory ash in the thump keg by sending the ash to the soap kettle where it belongs. He also takes apart the old blue-flame test and the idea that freeze-jacked applejack is pure.
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Full episode transcript
♦ Audible wax cylinder surface crackle, slow drip of clear distillate into a glass jar
♦ Barnaby the black bear grunting and chain clinking outside log cabin window
Wilkins: Barnaby! Settle yourself, you overgrown hearth rug. That's the planting moon up there, not a ham, and you can't eat it. Lie down before I sell you to a Concord furrier for a lap robe.
♦ Bear huffs, chain drags, heavy body thumps onto boards
♪ 1860s parlor banjo and mountain fiddle theme with antique warmth, swelling then fading under
Wilkins: Good evening, friends, neighbors, and whatever revenue clerks are pressing an ear to the stovepipe. This is Radio Moonshine with Alchemist G. G. Wilkins, coming to you from the log walls of Fort Wilkins on the Suncook Valley Turnpike, Route 28, in Pittsfield, Merrimack County, New Hampshire. I'm your host, dentist, blacksmith, inventor, and twice-arrested public nuisance, and tonight's topic is Spring Planting and Summer Drinking. That's a farmer's whole year from the first furrow to the last jug, with a still off to one side where the minister can't see it.
♦ Wax crackle
Announcer: A quick word, friends! The Flame-Flow Still, made under United States Patent 10,561,960, is hand-built of heavy-gauge pure electrolytic copper, as handsome as a new sleigh bell and as sturdy as a Pittsfield stone wall. See it now at moonshinestill.com!
♪ Short fiddle sting
Wilkins: Thank you, Announcer. That man could sell a winter coat to a woodstove.
♪ Banjo bridge, plucked slow
Wilkins: Segment one, then. The farmer's calendar. A Suncook Valley farmer in 1865 runs his life by three authorities: the Almighty, the Old Farmer's Almanac, and his wife, and the order changes depending on who's in the room. Mr. Robert B. Thomas started that almanac back in 1792, and there's hardly a farmhouse between here and Lancaster without one hung on a nail by the chimney, dog-eared, greasy, and swearing up and down that the moon decides when you plant.
Wilkins: My almanac says plant by the moon. My neighbor plants by the tavern clock, and his corn comes up crooked but cheerful.
Wilkins: The truer rule, the one the old men in Barnstead and Gilmanton swear by, is this: plant your corn when the young oak leaves are as big as a squirrel's ear. That's no superstition, friends. That's a thermometer God hung in the woods. When the oak's leafed out that far, the ground's warm and the killing frost has packed its bags. Plant before that and your seed sits rotting in cold mud like a deacon in a cold pew, and you've wasted good corn.
Wilkins: Then we drop the seed in hills and say the old rhyme. One for the blackbird, one for the crow, one for the cutworm, and one to grow. Four kernels for every stalk you hope to see. Out here I add a fifth verse: one for the deputy, because that's the only way he'll ever touch honest work.
♦ Barnaby grunts
Wilkins: Barnaby agrees. Barnaby takes a sixth kernel himself, and the scarecrow besides. Last May he ate the scarecrow down to the pole and spat out the hat. That's the only critic of my wardrobe I've ever taken seriously.
Wilkins: Now here's where the still comes in, quiet as a cat on a feather bed. In the fall the farmer presses his apples, and the sweet cider goes down cellar in barrels. Nobody has to do a thing to it. The wild yeast that rides in on the apple skins goes to work eating sugar, and by planting time that sweet cider's gone hard enough to make a Quaker cuss. Cider in a barrel is like a Concord politician: sweet in the fall, hard by spring, and rotten if you leave it alone through summer.
Wilkins: Then comes haying, late June into July, the hardest weeks of the whole year. Men swinging scythes from dew to dark, hot as the hinges of Hades, sweat running down into their boots till they squelch. For generations the custom in New England was a rum ration for the hired hands. A tot in the morning, a tot at noon, and more at sundown if the boss was generous or the crew was mutinous. A hired man in haying season has two speeds: slow, and asleep under the wagon. The rum doesn't improve either one.
Wilkins: So the temperance ladies went to war against the haying rum, and to be fair to them, they had a point. I've seen a hired man full of noon rum lay his scythe into his own shin and go hollering across a meadow like a gut-shot goose. Temperance ladies say rum in the hayfield ruins a man. I've seen the men. The hayfield ruined them first, and the rum just came to the funeral.
Wilkins: What took its place in many fields was switchel, haymaker's punch. Well water, cider vinegar, a knob of ginger, and a pour of molasses or maple syrup. It cuts the thirst and doesn't put a man to sleep in the windrows. Switchel tastes like a pickle went to church and got religion halfway, but a crew will drink it by the bucket and still be mowing at sundown.
♪ Fiddle sting
Wilkins: Before I go on, the plain truth, the same as I give a man before I put the forceps to him. Making distilled spirits to drink without a federal permit is against the law in these United States, and this program is history, entertainment, and education, nothing else. Now, on to the outlaws.
♪ Banjo bridge, faster, a little sly
Wilkins: Segment two. Legends, outlaws, runners, and my own sorry self. Spring is the worst season for a still-man, because spring is when the county remembers he exists. The roads dry out, the mud season ends, and suddenly every deputy in Merrimack County can get a horse up Route 28 without losing it to the axles.
Wilkins: Last May a young deputy rode in with a warrant in his breast pocket and a face like a boiled ham. Before he could open his mouth I put a seed bag in his hand and said, 'Good, you're the extra man. The oak leaves are at squirrel's ear, we're behind, drop four to a hill.' He was raised on a farm in Loudon, and a farm boy can't stand to see a field go unplanted. He planted three rows of Canada flint before he remembered he'd come to arrest me, and they were the straightest rows on the farm. I paid him in coin with my own stamp on it, and he rode home with his warrant still in his pocket and dirt under his fingernails for the first time since his baptism.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: That's the stamp. G. G. WILKINS, PITTSFIELD N.H. I paid my haying crew in coins I'd stamped myself, and the tavern keeper downtown has been reading my name off his till ever since like scripture.
Wilkins: Now I've got a man in the studio who knows more about copper than the Lord intended any mortal to know. He's covered in soot, he smells like a forge and a wet dog, and if you tell him a joint is good enough he'll look at you like you insulted his mother. Silas 'Hacksaw' McAllister, welcome to Fort Wilkins.
Silas: Evening, Doc. Your bear's lying across the doorway again. I had to step over him.
Wilkins: He likes you. If he didn't, you'd be stepping out of him. Silas, tonight is planting and haying. What does a coppersmith do in the season when every honest man is out in the field?
Silas: Same as the rest of the year, only hotter. Summer's when the farmers come in wanting things for the fields. Two summers back a haying crew boss over in Barnstead came to me wanting a water jug that wouldn't go warm by ten in the morning. His men were drinking hot switchel out of a stoneware crock and it was like drinking from a bathtub.
Wilkins: Hot switchel. That's a crime worse than anything the sheriff ever charged me with.
Silas: So I raised him a copper jug, two gallons, and his wife sewed it into a wool jacket. Soak the wool in the brook, hang the jug in the shade of the wagon, and as the water dries off the wool it pulls the heat right out. Cold enough to make your teeth ache at two in the afternoon. That boss told me the jug got more work out of the men than the rum ration ever had. Said they'd fight to be first to it.
Wilkins: A cold jug and a fistfight. That's a New Hampshire hayfield, all right. What about spring, Silas? I'd guess spring keeps you busy too.
Silas: Spring's frost heave, and frost heave is no friend to a still-house. One April a farmer up past the Gilmanton line had his hearth built straight on the dirt. Ground froze and thawed and froze again, and one morning his whole firebox had tipped like a drunk on a stool. Cracked clean through, and the pot sitting on it at a slant. Lucky it was cold and empty. If he'd had a fire going he'd have had a disaster.
Wilkins: A spring frost heave will lift a granite step two inches overnight and set it back crooked, which is more than any Merrimack magistrate has ever done for me.
Silas: That's when I made it my rule. Every pot I build goes on a dressed granite slab, and the slab goes in below the frost line, the way you'd set a gatepost. A pot that shifts stresses its seams, and stressed seams leak. A leak near fire is how a still-house turns into a bonfire.
Wilkins: You're a gloomy man, Silas.
Silas: I'm a careful one, Doc. Gloomy is what the careless man's widow gets.
Wilkins: Tell them about the birds. I've heard you tell it at the tavern, and I want it on the record.
Silas: You're going to make me look soft.
Wilkins: You are soft. You're a pudding with a hammer.
Silas: All right. I'd raised a coil and set it to cure on the sill of a hayfield shed, open window, good air. Came back the next morning and a pair of bobolinks had built a nest right in the turns of it. Grass, horsehair, the whole business, and four speckled eggs.
Wilkins: And a sane man knocks it down and finishes the job.
Silas: A sane man maybe. I waited. Three weeks, till the chicks were hatched and fledged and gone. The customer got tired of waiting and bought a coil off a tinker in Concord.
Wilkins: Silas waited three weeks for baby birds to learn to fly. I don't wait three minutes for a sheriff to learn to read. One more, Silas. Tell me about the worst thing anybody's ever brought you.
Silas: That's easy. An Epsom farmer came in with a dented copper kettle he'd been boiling maple sap in, wanted it patched and turned into a still pot. I turned it over and the seams were done in lead. Gray, soft, smeared on thick. I told him I'd fix it for a soap kettle and nothing else, because lead in anything you eat or drink is slow poison. He argued. I told him to go argue with the undertaker, since that's where he'd end up.
Wilkins: Spoken like a tooth-puller. The truth hurts, and then it saves you. Silas McAllister, ladies and gentlemen. Stay put, Silas. We're coming back to the copper.
♦ Barnaby grunts twice, chain clinks
Wilkins: Barnaby's applauding. Or he's hungry. With him it's the same noise.
♪ Brisk banjo stinger
Announcer: Friends! Neighbors! Lend me your ears for one moment of your lives! Every craftsman alive knows a poor tool makes a poor job, and a cheap pot is a lifetime of headaches. So I bring you the pride of the Suncook Valley: the Flame-Flow Still, the flagship of Moonshine Stills, made under United States Patent 10,561,960! It's hand-built of heavy-gauge, high-purity electrolytic copper, the cleanest copper a smith can work, with precision CNC-machined brass unions, so there's no lead seam and no cheap solder in it, only honest metal and tight joints! Its shape is engineered to maximize convective circulation, so the heat rolls evenly through every drop, and it delivers unmatched purity for essential oils, herbal tinctures, and traditional distillation demonstrations! Peppermint from your garden, lavender from the fencerow, a tincture for the medicine shelf, the Flame-Flow does it gleaming and true! If you love real American craftsmanship, look no further! Visit moonshinestill.com today! That's moonshinestill.com, and go straight to moonshinestill.com/products/flame-flow-copper-still to order your Flame-Flow flagship for $899.00! Or come see it shining with your own eyes at the Fort Wilkins Showroom on Route 28 in Pittsfield, New Hampshire! Bring your doubts, and you'll leave with a still! Moonshinestill.com!
♪ Fiddle flourish ends the ad
♪ Slow, warm banjo bridge
Wilkins: Segment three. Copper and the craft, the part of the evening where I stop roasting deputies and turn alchemist. Silas, stay where you are and correct me when I lie.
Silas: I'll keep count, Doc.
Wilkins: Every jar starts in the field, which is the whole point tonight. The corn you planted at squirrel's ear, the rye you cut in July, the apples you pressed in October. Grain gets cooked and fermented into a thin, sour wash before it ever sees fire. The fermenting tub is where the yeast does the real work, and the still only gathers up what the yeast already made. A still can't put in what the field didn't grow. Bad corn makes bad mash, and bad mash makes a jar that would strip paint off a Methodist steeple.
Wilkins: Now the run itself, and this is the part that keeps a man alive. A run comes off the worm in stages, the way a tooth comes out in stages. The first trickle, the foreshots, and the heads behind them, carry the sharp, nasty, volatile stuff, the wood-spirit kind that blinds and kills. That goes to the ground or the lamp, never the jar. Then the hearts, the sweet clean middle, which is the only part worth a damn. Then the tails, oily and dull, set aside. A man who keeps his foreshots because he hates to waste is the same fool who keeps a rotten molar because he paid to have it filled.
Silas: And the copper's the other half, Doc. A clean copper surface takes up the sulfur stink out of the vapor, but only if it's clean. A pot that's never scrubbed has stopped doing its job.
Wilkins: And everything joined with silver solder or proper unions, never lead, as you so eloquently told the Epsom gentleman. Next is fire. Keep it low. A low fire gives a man time to watch his cuts, and a roaring fire runs the whole thing together so heads and hearts come out in one muddy rush. And never, ever walk away from a hot still. Spirit vapor catches like dry hay in August. I've watched a still-house in Northwood burn to the sills in the time it took the owner to go answer the call of nature. He came back buttoning his trousers and the roof was already falling in.
Silas: Granite under the pot, no lead in the seams, a low fire, and your eyes on the worm. That's the whole sermon.
Wilkins: Amen, and pass the plate. Silas McAllister, thank you, sir. Mind the bear on your way out.
Silas: Always do, Doc.
♦ Footsteps on plank floor, door creaks, Barnaby grunts lazily
♪ Comic fiddle slide
Wilkins: Segment four. Myths, slang, and the mail. We had a voice come down the line from the Carolina hills. Let's hear it.
♦ Wax cylinder hiss deepens, click of a playback tape
Wilkins: This is Cletus 'Rabbit' Miller, writing in from Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Rabbit says: 'Alchemist, my uncle swears old-timers used to throw hickory ashes or red oak shavings into the thump keg to clean out bad heads. Is there any truth to that, or was he just making swamp medicine?'
♦ Click, hiss fades
Wilkins: Rabbit, God bless you and God bless your uncle, and may the Lord forgive him his chemistry. Let me tell you where hickory ash really belongs. Every farm wife in New Hampshire keeps an ash hopper by the back door. She pours water through hardwood ashes, and what drips out the bottom is lye. She boils that lye with kitchen fat and gets soft soap. Up here we shipped potash by the barrel down to Boston for good money in my granddaddy's day. Ash is alkaline. It's made for scrubbing, not for drinking.
Wilkins: Put ash in your soap kettle and you get clean britches. Put it in your thump keg and all you get is a dirty conscience and a bitter jar. A thump keg doesn't sort good from bad. It just gives the vapor another trip, and the dangerous early stuff boils off first no matter what you drop in there. The only medicine is the cut: throw the foreshots and heads away. Rabbit, hickory ash in a thump keg is like a Sunday hat on a hog. It looks like an effort, and the hog's still a hog. Red oak shavings belong in a cooper's barrel, not the keg.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: That's one coin struck for Rabbit Miller. Shout it from the porch, Wilkesboro! Rabbit, I'm stamping you a large cent and setting it on the mantel. Come to Pittsfield and it's yours, if you can get past the bear.
Wilkins: Since I've got the punch warm, let's put down two more myths. First, the blue flame. Old-timers put a spoonful of spirit to the candle, and if it burns blue they call it pure and safe. Friends, a blue flame tells you one thing: the spirit burns. It can't tell you whether there's wood-spirit in the jar or lead from a bad seam. A blue flame on a spoon tells you the spirit burns. So does my barn, and I wouldn't drink that either.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Second, jacking. Some fellows leave a barrel of hard cider out in a January cold snap, let the water freeze, and draw off the strong liquor that won't freeze, and they call it applejack and swear it's purer than anything off a still. It isn't. Freezing throws away water and nothing else. Every harsh, headachy, dangerous thing in that cider stays in the jug, packed tighter than before. A still-man can cut his heads off and throw them away. A jacker can't. Freezing your cider to make applejack is like freezing a skunk to make it smell better. It's still a skunk, only now it's a concentrated one.
♦ Steel punch clangs on copper coin
Wilkins: Three coins and three myths buried. A good night's work at the anvil.
♦ Barnaby yawns, a long creaking groan
♪ Theme returns softly, banjo and fiddle under
Announcer: One last quick word! Before you bank your fire tonight, visit moonshinestill.com and see the Flame-Flow Still, United States Patent 10,561,960, pure electrolytic copper, and a showpiece in any parlor! Moonshinestill.com!
Wilkins: Friends, if tonight gave you a taste for the old craft, the cuts, the copper, the history, and the safety of it, sign up for the Alchemist G. G. Wilkins Distilling Course. I teach it the same way I pull a tooth: straight, honest, and without wasting your afternoon. It's history and craft for the curious, and it stays on the right side of the law. Tell them Barnaby sent you. He won't mind. He can't read.
Wilkins: So plant at squirrel's ear, drink your switchel in the hayfield, leave the rum for the funeral, and send your ashes to the soap kettle. Thank you to Silas McAllister, to Rabbit Miller down in Wilkesboro, and to every one of you who listened this far without calling the sheriff.
Wilkins: Keep your copper clean, your cuts honest, and your fire low. Goodnight from Fort Wilkins.
♦ Bear grunt and final drip into jar
♪ Theme swells and fades into wax cylinder crackle