Book Signing and Cider Pressing with Author Diane Flynt
Venue: The Hale Community Garden & Roper Solar Greenhouse, Blacksburg
Date: Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Time: 5:00 - 7:30 PM
Event Types: Food, Speaking Engagements
Cost: Free
Description:
The Hale Community Garden & Roper Solar Greenhouse presents a Book Signing and Cider Pressing with Author Diane Flynt on Wednesday, October 2, 2024.

Schedule of Events:
• 5:00 PM: Cider Pressing
• 6:00 PM: Talk with Author Diane Flynt

Sample fresh cider made on a 100 year old press at the Hale Community Garden. We will be joined by author and multiple James Beard finalist Diane Flynt. Her book "Wild, Tamed, Lost, Revived" chronicles the rich history of apple and cider production in the American South, as well as her own experiences founding Foggy Ridge Cider.

Diane will talk at 6:00 PM and Blacksburg Books will be there with copies for purchase.

To RSVP, visit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfQnv3cXrnKUcdgTN-YCibBy5pqVbDoHoPxhPRIUI3QEmbqGw/viewform.

For anyone who's ever picked an apple fresh from the tree or enjoyed a glass of cider, writer and orchardist Diane Flynt offers a new history of the apple and how it changed the South and the nation. Showing how southerners cultivated over 2,000 apple varieties from Virginia to Mississippi, Flynt shares surprising stories of a fruit that was central to the region for over 200 years. Colorful characters abound in this history, including aristocratic Belgian immigrants, South Carolina plantation owners, and multiple presidents, each group changing the course of southern orchards. She shows how southern apples, ranging from northern varieties that found fame on southern soil to hyper-local apples grown by a single family, have a history beyond the region, from Queen Victoria's court to the Oregon Trail. Flynt also tells us the darker side of the story, detailing how apples were entwined with slavery and the theft of Indigenous land. She relates the ways southerners lost their rich apple culture in less than the lifetime of a tree and offers a tentatively hopeful future.

Alongside unexpected apple history, Flynt traces the arc of her own journey as a pioneering farmer in the southern Appalachians who planted cider apples never grown in the region and founded the first modern cidery in the South. Flynt threads her own story with archival research and interviews with orchardists, farmers, cidermakers, and more. The result is not only the definitive story of apples in the South but also a new way to challenge our notions of history.

A multiple-time James Beard Award finalist for Outstanding Wine, Spirits, or Beer Professional, Diane Flynt founded Foggy Ridge Cider in 1997 after leaving her corporate career and produced cider until 2018. She now sells cider apples from the Foggy Ridge orchards in the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Hale Community Garden & Roper Solar Greenhouse is located at 215 Maywood Street in Blacksburg, VA.

To view the event flyer, visit: https://i.postimg.cc/C1DvyXVk/image.png.

For more information, visit: https://liveworkeatgrow.org/events/ or https://www.facebook.com/nrvcommunitygardens or email gardens@liveworkeatgrow.org.