Back to StoriesSave Bears, Drink Cider
Farmstead harvests crabapples, plus
some sweet apples, from 200 properties across Teton County each fall, removing
at peak ripeness fruit that would otherwise fall to the ground and rot,
attracting wildlife. Bellorado estimates that they cull apples from about 350
trees, and each year receive permission to harvest from a few more. It turns
out, crabapples also lend themselves to dry, flavorful hard cider.
THE FUTURE OF FARMSTEAD
Still, those proactive measures
seem to include working with Farmstead : in 2022, the number of landowners signing up to have their
fruit harvested increased by 60-70 when it typically went up by 15-20 in
previous years.
June 25, 2024
Save Bears, Drink CiderWyoming’s only cidery is on a mission to reduce human-wildlife conflict in Greater Yellowstone. They say harvesting neighborhood apples is the key
Bears, elk, deer and other wildlife can wander into towns in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem seeking food sources including human trash, dog food, birdseed and fruit-bearing trees. The founders of Farmstead Cider, Wyoming's only cidery, are aiming to mitigate fruit attractants by harvesting apples in Jackson neighborhoods and turning them into fermented beverages. Photo by Jim Peaco/NPS
by
Bowman Leigh
For
those perusing their local grocery store in Wyoming and its neighboring states,
a can of Farmstead Cider might stand out. On the side of the can, big black
letters read, “Save Bears, Drink Cider.”
The
cans, along with several bottled varieties, come from a garage in Jackson,
Wyoming, where locals Orion Bellorado and Ian McGregor are making small-batch
ciders using apples harvested from nearby backyards and neighborhoods.
In
Jackson, an affluent ski town on the edge of a highly trafficked national park,
humans and wildlife coexist in the same space. The potential for conflict
increases when these mountain neighbors get too close. Animals that become
habituated to food sources like trash, bird seed, dog food or fruit-bearing
trees run the risk of being either relocated or euthanized.
Farmstead
has been selling cider since 2020, aiming to remove from the landscape animal
attractants like crabapples that can entice bears, moose, deer and elk into
neighborhoods throughout Teton County—situations that
often
end poorly for the animals, particularly large omnivores
like black and grizzly bears.
“Every
time that wildlife comes in, there's no world where the animals win,” Bellorado
said. “Even if they win one time, they're not going to win more than one time.”
Once
they harvest the fruit, Bellorado and McGregor allow it to ferment naturally,
waiting for the apples to break down until they are blendable and ready to
drink. They don’t add yeast like commercial cideries often do, but instead
prefer a wild fermentation method that makes each batch unique. Using unwanted
crabapples not only helps protect wildlife, but also gives Farmstead’s products
a diverse, wild-foraged flavor, the cider makers say.
On
the heels of their fourth anniversary as a startup cidery, Farmstead’s direct
impact on reducing human-wildlife conflict is hard to measure, but the microbusiness
is working to grow community awareness about animal attractants like
crabapples, providing a free service—and a tasty beverage—to those living in
bear country.
PLANTING
THE SEED
Farmstead
came about through a mix of “random chance and relative luck,” according to
Bellorado. He and McGregor grew up together in Jackson, later
collaborating on two other food-related businesses, and by 2015 had both moved
back to their hometown . That same year, Bellorado and his
wife Heidi received a cider press as a wedding
gift.
“Do
you know the verb ‘to scrump’?” Bellorado asked, laughing over the phone as we
caught up in mid-May. “To scrump is to steal your neighbor's fruit without
permission.”
Excited
to experiment with the new press, Bellorado
and McGregor dutifully began looking for apples
in the neighborhood to satisfy their New England wives’ nostalgia for freshly
pressed cider. It was then that Bellorado’s roommate, a technician at the Teton
Conservation District, caught wind of their efforts and it sparked an idea.
Drought
had led to a sparse berry crop that year and wildlife were wandering into
Jackson looking for food. At the same time, decorative crabapple trees hooked
up to supplemental irrigation had produced a bumper crop of fruit, increasing
the potential for human-wildlife conflict. Morgan Graham, who had recently been
hired as a GIS and wildlife habitat specialist at TCD, remembers interviewing
Mike Boyce, Jackson regional large carnivore biologist for Wyoming Game and
Fish, about what projects needed extra support.
“Mike's
very candid response was if we could get rid of all the crabapple trees in
Teton County, it would make his life a lot easier,” Graham said.
Farmstead harvests apples from 200 properties across Teton County each fall, removing at peak ripeness fruit that would otherwise fall to the ground and rot, attracting wildlife.
Once
word spread to TCD staff about Bellorado and McGregor’s urban harvesting, an
opportunity presented itself. “Within the office, there was almost a joke that,
‘Oh, we're trying to figure out what to do with these apples to reduce the
potential for conflict, why don't we pay Orion and Ian to go pick them up and
make cider out of them?’” Graham added.
And
that’s exactly what happened. From 2017-2019, TCD contracted Farmstead Cider to reach out
to landowners throughout Teton County and request permission to harvest their
crabapples, specifically targeting priority bear conflict areas identified by
Wyoming Game and Fish. By their second year in 2018, Farmstead had nearly
tripled the number of harvested trees, increasing from 65 to 172.
Bellorado
and McGregor also mapped out where apple and crabapple trees
were located throughout the county—a handy metric that other agencies had yet
to determine.
After
three years of funding support, the business officially launched on its own in
2020 and now distributes cider to restaurants, grocers and liquor stores
throughout Wyoming and in the
nearby states
of Idaho, Colorado, Montana and Utah . Farmstead also operates an online
“Harvest Helper” platform where local landowners in
Teton County can either opt-in to having their fruit harvested or learn how to
do it themselves. Those who harvest their own are encouraged to trade the fruit
to Farmstead for, what else, cider.
Employees at Farmstead sort through apples to make cider out of the headquarters in Jackson, Wyoming. Photo courtesy Farmstead Cider
When
it comes to teasing out whether Farmstead’s mission to curb human-wildlife
conflict is actually making a difference, finding a clear answer can be tricky.
Wyoming
Game and Fish tracks instances of human-bear conflict in Teton County, but
there is no data that
explicitly links Farmstead’s work to lowering these incidents.
Because a range of factors influence how and where humans encounter wildlife,
Graham says calculating a Farmstead-specific statistic isn’t practical.
“It’s
impossible to diagnose it as one individual thing,” he explained. “We can do
our best to report on the things we know about, but it's not a controlled
environment … it's not in a laboratory. And so there's always going to be
difficulty in saying, ‘We did this and we had less conflicts as a direct
result.’”
From 2017-2019, Teton Conservation District contracted Farmstead Cider to reach out to landowners throughout Teton County and request permission to harvest their crabapples, specifically targeting priority bear conflict areas.
Still,
Graham says Farmstead is helping to increase awareness and every bit of that education
helps, even if there isn’t an easy way to quantify its impact.
“[Farmstead]
has undoubtedly raised awareness across government agencies, and I would say
undoubtedly among citizens of Teton County, that a plant food like crabapples
is something that they should be aware of,” Graham said.
Since
Farmstead started reaching out to landowners, countywide regulations have gone into effect, including an
amendment that prohibits new ornamental fruit-bearing trees like crabapples
from being planted, and requires existing fruit trees to be fully harvested
each year or for wildlife fencing to be installed.
A
2023 report compiled by the Jackson Hole
Conservation Alliance shows a 60 percent reduction in human-bear conflict in 2022,
from 103 incidents in 2021 down to 41. The year 2022 was also a huge one for
crabapples; Bellorado says that Farmstead filled every truck and trailer they
had five times in order to get through the harvest. But the downturn in
conflict could have also been due to what Bellorado calls the “399 effect”:
locals who saw or heard that Jackson’s celebrity grizzly, Bear 399, and her
cubs were in town may have taken extra precautions.
“Once
it was known [Grizzly 399] was running around, I talked to people who were
buying electric fences and stuff to put around the compost heaps. They were
just being proactive in a way that may not have happened historically,”
Bellorado said, “as much as I'd like to say the drop [in conflict ] is from us.”
In
thinking about the future of Farmstead, Bellorado and McGregor’s approach is the same as it was when they began:
two friends passionate about their hometown and comfortable with some organized
chaos as they work to make a product of value for their community.
In
fact, during the interview for this story, Bellorado was busy running electrical wires and laying out lights for Farmstead’s new garage space . He says the move doesn’t necessarily indicate that they’re
scaling up, though the larger space will allow Farmstead to double its production
if desired. Mainly, he says it will give him and McGregor room to slow down and
evaluate how and what they distribute.
“Our
goal is to have a sustainable life with our families and have a business that
has an ethos that we can sleep at night and be content with,” Bellorado said.
“How do we still deliver on our mission, which is to mitigate animal conflict
in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, while maximizing the utility to our
bodies and time to our families? It’s just about finding the right mix there.”
Just
like with cider.
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