By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com
PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP — Seventy pounds of dry beans, 15 pounds of onions, 12 of carrots. Nine bunches of celery, two hams, 25 ham hocks and the stock produced from boiling them. Add a dash of peppercorns, a few secret ingredients, a wood fire, antique kettle and six hours of stirring, and you’ll have the bean soup that’s so popular among Log Cabin Days visitors.
Even if you were to follow that recipe, Barrie Bottorf, chairman of the Log Cabin Committee for the Ashtabula County Historical Society, says the result would probably still come up short when compared to what they serve because it would be devoid of the atmosphere.
That ambiance includes the tinge of wood smoke, the sound of country music and a blacksmith’s hammer, and the bright colors of early autumn and rag rugs. The festival celebrates the Blakeslee Log Cabin, built in 1810, and the lifestyle of the pioneers who built it. A major fundraiser for the historical society, the festival itself is free; the money is earned by selling festival favorites like the soup, corn-on-the-cob, apple butter and sausage sandwiches.
Two dollars buys a cup of soup and chunk of cornbread, if you get there early enough.
“We sell out,” Bottorf says of the soup, the first kettle of which is placed on the wood fire shortly after 6 a.m. “Last year we had a pouring down rain and we had people who sat here 45 minutes to an hour asking ‘Is it ready?’ The last people in line didn’t get any after all that waiting. It sold out that fast.”
Nellie Simms said the festival would also sell out of the apple butter boiling in a copper kettle over a wood fire slowly, constantly being stirred by volunteers operating a wooden paddle. Ray Clark, who supervises production of the product, said they started with 14 gallons of homemade apple sauce and a half-gallon of cider. After cooking over the wood fire for several hours, the thick sauce would be sweetened with 28 pounds of sugar and cinnamon to taste.
Volunteers can the apple butter in sterilized jars on the spot, then watch it sell out.
As with the bean soup, it’s the atmosphere that makes the difference.
“It’s made the old-fashioned way, in a copper kettle,” says Simms, who recalls making apple butter as a child back in her native West Virginia. “It’s done out in the open. It’s a labor of love.”
Another labor of love are the jellies and hot mustard sauce Phyllis Clark made and historical society volunteers Nancy Arnold and Jean Regner. The exotic flavors included wild blackberry, elderberry, wild crabapple and corn cob. Bottorf says he stocks up on Clark’s hot mustard sauce every year.
“It’s tangy,” said Arnold
The festival continues from noon to 5 p.m. today. Taking the place of the copper apple-butter kettle will be an iron one filled with hot vegetable oil for frying doughnuts. The hot dunkers are rolled in sugar and cinnamon before being served to the waiting crowds.
Demonstrators and exhibits are set up on the grounds, tours of the cabin are offered and food items will be sold throughout the day, until the supplies are as exhausted as the volunteers.
“That soup amazes me,” said Bottorf as he watched his niece, Julie Grandbouche, stir one of the two kettles cooking over wood fires. “You’d think it was a gourmet dish. It’s bean soup.”
