MEREDITH GOAD, Staff Writer
Portland Press Herald
March 5, 2008

Like the Johnny of yore, C. Waite Maclin is scattering the seeds he hopes will grow his 'Pastor Chuck' line of apple sauces, butters and salsas.

Apples may be healthy, but are they good for your soul? C. Waite Maclin thinks so, despite their shady reputation from the Book of Genesis.

"The interesting thing is, people think oftentimes that Adam and Eve ate an apple," Maclin said. "They didn't eat an apple. It just says that they ate of the fruit, and somehow apples got a bad name." Maclin should know. He is, after all, "Pastor Chuck," a man of the cloth as well as a maker of organic apple butter and applesauce for the masses.

Maclin is an Episcopal minister and counselor from Portland who has been marketing his apple products for three and a half years under the Pastor Chuck label. He's decided to expand the business this year. Maclin has moved production from Maine to Kime's Cider Mill in Bendersville, Pa., near Gettysburg, and is in the process of lining up distributors that will put him in stores throughout New England. He's also working on a new product, apple salsa, and hopes to have a pie filling and no-sugar-added applesauce by year's end.

Maclin took his biggest leap of faith in December, when he closed his psychotherapy practice to concentrate full-time on growing the Pastor Chuck brand. He misses his clients terribly, "but I'm delighted to be doing what I'm doing."

"I've been in the business of nurturing people all my life," he said, "and this is just another way of nurturing people."

Maclin, 73, is originally from Greensboro, N.C., and he still speaks with a soft Southern accent. He's presided over parishes in Raleigh and Durham, and lived in Baltimore for seven years. Winchester, Va., was next, and then Maine.

Maclin hasn't shepherded a church since the late 1970s, but he still performs weddings, funerals and the occasional baptism. He preaches occasionally on summer Sundays at a seasonal chapel in Tenants Harbor. He has also worked as a psychotherapist and organizational consultant, and spent three years in the Philippines as a training officer for the Peace Corps.

Maclin was named after his great-grandfather, Charles, but in his daily life, he goes by his middle name, Waite. A cousin once nicknamed him "Pastor Chuck," and Maclin decided it was the perfect name for his line of apple products.

How did he go from Abraham to apples? Maclin and his wife, Christine, own some property in Cushing, and decided to start an orchard there in the mid-1980s. Maclin began selling his apples at roadside stands and fiddling around with them in the kitchen. He knew nothing about making apple butter or applesauce, but tinkered around with the spices and started sharing the results with friends.

He began selling his applesauce and apple butter in November 2004, and they are now in about 90 stores. The applesauce sells for around $4 to $4.50, depending on the store, and the apple butter retails for $4.50 to $6. A no-sugar-added version of the apple butter is sweetened with apple cider.

Maclin has made the rounds of trade shows in the past couple of years, including the New England Products Trade Show and the New York Fancy Food Show. This year, he'll focus on retailing by hawking his products at various regional food festivals. "I wanted to put all my energy into selling the product," he said.

Maclin tempts consumers with a motto that capitalizes both on his profession and the apple's association with the Garden of Eden: "Taste this and know the difference between good and evil!"

Until recently, Maclin distributed his products himself. He recently signed on with Crown of Maine, and is in talks with other distributors who can get his face on shelves throughout New England.

He tried for two years to find a production facility in Maine that could handle his business before looking outside the state. Moving production to Pennsylvania has ramped up his volume from around 100 cases per production run to 1,300 cases.

There's no way Maclin's small Cushing orchard could handle that kind of volume, so for now he is using apples from Ricker Hill Orchards in Turner. The apples in his products, he swears, will always come from Maine.

Maclin still sells apples from his Cushing orchard at roadside stands, gives some to the local food bank, and uses them to work on new products.

He's still developing the apple salsa, which is flavored with spices such as cumin, chili pepper and oregano. The current version isn't chunky enough, he said, even after adding some dried apples and cranberries.

"The flavor is wonderful. It's the consistency I've got to do something about," Maclin said.

It's a devil of a problem.