Paha Cider LLC

Mark started homebrewing beer in the early 2000s. When he moved to Iowa with his family in 2017, he was inspired to try his hand at cidermaking because of the abundance of fresh apples growing in Iowa. After 5 years of cidermaking for friends and family, he was bolstered by questions from friends asking when they could purchase his cider. He entered a few ciders in the largest cider competition in the world (GLINTCAP) and took home some medals. At this point he figured he might be onto something!

During a Thanksgiving visit one year, Mark shared with his sister-in-law, Mo, his idea to start a cidery. Did she want to join? Heck yes! A year or so later, plans were well underway for Paha Cider.

Mark and his family live on an acreage outside of Waverly. In 2018, he started Solstice Farm, raising pastured poultry, layer hens, and cultivating mushrooms for sale at area farmers markets and through a CSA. The family planted 100 fruit trees and 120 berry shrubs: apples, pears, cherries, aronia berries, elderberries, and honeyberries. Once he decided to start a cidery, he knew he wanted to grow more apples! Mo moved to Iowa in 2022, and helped plant a high-density orchard of 120 cider apple trees. In 2023, we added an additional 50 apple trees along the driveway. Now we’re out of room and looking for more land to use for apple production.

We manage our orchard with holistic practices. Any controls or fertilizers that we use are approved for organic use. One of the great things about turning apples into cider is that many cosmetic blemishes do not negatively impact the flavor of the cider. We retain as much natural area as we can on our farm to provide habitat for native wildlife (including pollinators!) and encourage biodiversity.

While we hope to continue planting more apple trees so that we can grow as much of our own fruit as possible in the future, we won’t be able to grow everything we need for our cidery. We’re excited to source apples and juice from Iowa as much as possible, and we’ll be supplementing this with other regional juice. We are fortunate that the midwest is a prime region for growing fruit.

Thanks for following along on our journey—We’re excited to offer our ciders to a wider audience.