Help WildCraft Transition and Celebrate 10 Years

WildCraft Cider Works is celebrating 10 years of operation, and wow, what a journey this last decade has been! Our program was founded back in 2013 out of a background of resource management, land stewardship, and historical documentation of the valley’s history of fruit plantings. WildCraft was originally designed as a non-profit (at that time called Tree-Cycle), a program designed to maximize the utilization of tree and plant materials from restoration sites, funneling choice organic materials back to local industries who were otherwise sourcing from a much wider radius and substantially increasing carbon footprint. In the continuous discoveries of old plantings of apples on these sites, it was quickly realized that there were no industries utilizing this abundant wasted resource. We built WildCraft to become that solution. We released our first cider for sale, a keg to Friendly St. Market, on September 16th, 2014, and packaged 20,000 gallons of wild cider that first season. Also growing from the roots of a furniture and stair building shop, we leased a space in the center of a 1910 brick building and fully restored it to showcase the old beauty of its original form as the home of our first cidery, and, according to USA Today, the first dedicated cider pub and restaurant in the nation. This is now the home of The Wheel Apizza Pub, a bustling brewery and pizzeria.

In this past decade, we have managed to cycle over 4 million pounds of fruit through our cider mill and turn it into a cherished wild fermented product that has inspired many across the country, and even the globe. We have put together crews of local harvesters who are able to interact with this unique fruit and learn the processes of natural preservation. We have worked with hundreds of property owners to see the fruit of their land utilized, trees kept clean, and offered a cider in return that they feel a sense of pride in enjoying and sharing. WildCraft has been featured in dozens of national publications such as USA Today, Sunset Magazine, Wine Enthusiast, and many more. We also earned the honor of the 2020 Wine Enthusiast “Top 40 under 40 Winemakers in the US.” We have celebrated this original and unique system of self-reliance and food resiliency for the past decade and are so incredibly thankful to have been able to create an experience that offers a different way of seeing, tasting, and learning from our surroundings – a system independent from the influences of agricultural giants and lab-based food supplies. We have been able to supply over 1,000 restaurants and shops with this unique product over these years.

In July 2018, we completed the buildout of a timber framed community space, solely utilizing materials from a restoration project conducted by Friends of Buford Park at the north bottomlands of our local Mt. Pisgah Nature Area. This collaborative effort is an example of what this program is designed to offer. The materials were paid for to support the land effort and in return, with our own hands, we created a vibrant community space with the soul of our surroundings that has been an affordable hub of non-profit celebrations and fundraisers, memorials, weddings, support for artists and musicians in growing their careers, and a gathering place where we have hosted traveling musicians from around the world.

While we are so incredibly proud of these efforts, there has been a sequence of hardships since the year of 2020 that sent us in a downward spiral that has finally met its fate. After three years of attempted, yet failed negotiations with the landlords of the building where we operate to find adaptations in our structure, applying for grants and being denied, the stubbornness to never stop feeding our vision and our community… we just simply cannot afford to be in this space. To us, it is more important to hold the vision and intention of the organization in its purity than to produce anything under our brand or out of our facility unworthy of our standards. We have also very recently lost the life of the closest friend to the founder tragically to an absolutely shocking accident. He was not only a beloved family member to the people of WildCraft, but also a key person in the operation itself. This has left a big hole and understandably slowed the necessary changes that were in motion to allow for time in mourning and to painfully imagine a future without him.

While it is time to move on, we still intend to keep the core of this program alive. We have been offered an incredibly gracious opportunity by the owner of Yachats Brewing, Nathan Bernard, to have a space to continue offering these stories through cider and to keep shining for communities in the future. We are also in the process of moving our apple processing to Crossroads Farm in Coburg, where Ben Tilley (Owner of Agrarian Ales), has opened his farm to us as a space to continue harvesting and supporting the many rare orchards that we have formed relationships with over the years. This will include a planted library of the many unique varieties of apples that we have encountered.

Though we try to remain optimistic and embrace new opportunities, this change is not only devastating to our staff and seasonal family, but detrimental to the many working relationships with whom we have collaborated to bring this incredible project that produces some of the most unique ciders the region has to offer. While we have undoubtedly been blessed to be offered these places to operate, we are not financially sound to see the move through in its entirety. Throughout all these years, we have yet to ever reach out to the community for monetary support, as the goal has been to see a sustainable system operate self-sufficiently. This being stated, the time has come where we have to ask for help.

In addition to raising funds to host our 10th annual Harvest Party, the final celebration in the building before our departure, your contribution will also go towards supporting a move to new locations. This way we can be with everyone one last time in this beloved space before we transition. The cost of this event can run up to $20,000 and has either been close to a break even, donating all product sales to cover event expenses, or a complete financial loss. The importance of this event supremely outweighs monetary gains and is a part of the cultural fabric of the greater WildCraft collective. And while the interest to gain monetarily is not the reason for putting on this event each year, we just simply cannot afford to lose a drop. It would mean everything to ensure that this event sees its 11th year and that WildCraft has a possible future, even if in a new venue.

We humbly ask you to consider a contribution towards keeping the hopes of WildCraft’s program alive and to continue to evolve and nurture the ever changing landscapes of plants and people.

There is no amount too small or large. We are grateful for any support that we can get in this time. If you are unable to share monetarily, please share our story and this message with your friends and family.

With apples in our hands and a hopeful future ahead of us, we truly thank you for your love and support over the years.