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The smell of autumn rises from Ann DeMaury's basement.

It's the scent of cinnamon, cloves, sugar, apples and a little something special cooking in DeMaury's 40-gallon copper kettle during apple butter season at Ann's Apple Butter in Botetourt County.

"Of course you have to wait until the apples are ripe, so usually about mid-September we'll get started and I'll stay busy, six days a week, right up through January," she said. "Well, I'll finish by January if I'm lucky," she added.

An apple butter-making day starts with labeling jars from the previous day's canning, then a pallet of apples is brought in by tractor and the chopping, ricing (making apple sauce), cooking and spicing begins.

At 4 p.m., the apple butter has been cooking for hours and is ready for canning. Family members and kids from DeMaury's church form an assembly line to pour, top, wash, dry and assemble jar after jar of apple butter in a spicy steam cloud.

"It gets a little warm in there early on," said DeMaury, "but by January you're thankful for the warmth.

She'll eventually can around 13,000 quarts, many of which will go to local restaurants and food shops.

DeMaury is a second-generation commercial apple butter producer. Her father engineered machine-powered apple peelers and sauce churners when he began in the early 1970s. She took over in 1997 and has vendors from Northern Virginia to Georgia.

She has had desperate customers from as far away as Arizona call trying to find her apple butter.

"If they'll pay the shipping, I'll box it and send it to them."

Video and story by Sam Dean/The Roanoke Times

The Roanoke Times is holding the first "Meet the Photographers" get together on Thursday November 12, 2009. This will be a chance to come out and talk photography with the staff members of The Roanoke Times. I am going to be hosting the first one, and my talk will be about sports photography, focusing on the action and the emotion both on and off the field. Come by and join us is you can. Here is the info for the talk.

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Thursday, Nov. 12
7:30 – 9 p.m.
@ The Roanoke Times
RSVP by Monday, Nov. 9
to photo@roanoke.com

STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS  | The Roanoke Times

Jason Hall, a mechanic for eight years (two of those years with VDOT), sprays the floor in VDOT's Rocky Mount repair shop as Leon Prillaman, assistant district equipment manager, sweeps on Thursday, October 22, 2009.  The shop closed its doors the next day. Hall will continue working for the department of transportation at its Martinsville location.

Football fans at the William Byrd/Northside football game on Friday night (October 16) sat in the rain and watched the game in rain gear in an attempt to shelter themselves with various colorful umbrellas.  I asked myself, "What's wrong with these people?" as I stood in the mushy wet grass, my socks soaked and my feet cold.

I was there to photograph the game.

The only other reason I could possibly imagine to be there in that rain might be if my son was on the team.  He's not. He's only 10 years old.

"Do all of these people have kids on the teams, cheerleading squads or the bands?" I thought.  Quite possibly. That had to be the reason they were tolerating the miserable cold and dampness.

Otherwise, there's something I don't understand. But despite my discomfort, it looked quite pretty.

STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/The Roanoke Times