The Ironmen lining up.
And the Severn Gilders Morris doing their stuff:
While the band played:
And apples were pressed:
And unusual varieties identified:
And home-made cakes and roast pork buns scoffed, stories told, local makers’ wares displayed, and all matters relating to trees and woodland widely shared, and then bottles of fresh-pressed juice to take home…
And all in celebration of the apple whose magnificent variety and native seasonal range has been much undermined since the advent of supermarkets which managed to reduce a possible choice of 750 cultivars to half a dozen. But things are changing. Old apple trees are being rediscovered and nurtured, and orchards replanted. Nor could there be a better time to be planting them. Trees absorb carbon and we need to plant three trillion fairly fast. Apart from which, there is much to be said for the old saying: an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Tish Farrell 
oh I’m loving the joy on some of their faces . . looks like so much fun and tasty and environmentally friendly too. My kind of lines 😀
The juice, pressed from zillions of varieties, was also v. delicious.
😍
love the jubilee vibe here too – and good news about the old varieties of apple trees going in – and cheers to what they do for the environment health
You can’t beat a fresh, crunchy apple for goodness, can you, Yvette. Also apple trees come in such small grafted formats these days, most people with a bit of garden can find space for one.
We have one on the side of our property and it gives way too much of a crop – thankfully we found a guy who takes them for his horses — but a small grafted one sounds ideal for a home garden
That can be a problem – over-supply. Except now I’m thinking of home-brew cider 🙂
Hi – never ever thought about cider – that would have been a fun project back when the children were still around – but Tish – did you know that my older son learned how to make apple pie because of that three? The first few years we had a manageable amount – and we still shared some – but I made a few things – including baked apples – and as a middle schooler he did the apple pie (I only made apple crumble – totally different) and then we went up north in 2013 and I dropped them off at SIL house – she took him to store to get all ingredients and he made four apple pies and showed everyone he could bake! Cheers apples….🍎🍏
Love that! What a very excellent son!
made planting that apple tree priceless – and now whatever happens to it is not a big deal – although still nice to see it is serving apples for the horses
Seems surreal, a place to be.
Looks like a day of fun and fresh pressed…heaven on earth
Fresh-pressed heaven it was.
And a good time was had by all. What a delightful post! I love that old/heritage apples are being brought back (and heritage types of other foods as well.) I’m still full from lunch, but you’ve made me hungry again, at least mentally. 🙂
janet
One of the excellent outcomes of the National Trust restoring the kitchen gardens of their stately homes, is that they have been reviving some of old orchards still surviving there and identifying the varieties, some of which are several hundred years old. The orchards were of course planted to cover the longest possible fruiting season for diners at the ‘big house’ – right up to Christmas.
Oh what fun. I love little local festivals like this. I had no idea there were so many different types of apples!
Alison
I love this time of year when the fresh crop of apples is available. It will be apple-everything for a while!
I had never heard of Morris dancers until late this summer when we encountered a couple of groups at a summer farmer’s market. Now I’ve read about them in a couple of posts. Funny how that works 🙂
It’s fascinating how Morris Dancing has become international – even in steam punk versions. It had a revival in the UK during the 1960s (I think) along with pubs serving ‘ploughman’s lunches’ – bread, cheese and pickles. Men with sticks and waving handkerchiefs have long been a source of media ridicule ever since. It’s good fun to watch all the same.
I was fascinated by the dancers. It was a delight to watch – what do the media know anyway? 🙂
I love that heritage varieties (of all sorts of plants) are being planted again. About time!
Hear, hear for heritage seeds – and that goes for the whole globe.
Absolutely. I got a book from the library about seed-saving — heavens, there’s a lot to it. It makes me realise how much wisdom our ancestors had that we have largely lost.
I was just reading a website that allows organic gardeners to be members of their seed library. It was v. strict. Only one packet of any heritage seed per person, and no repeat orders. Also you must try to save seed for the following year’s sowing and build up stocks to pass on to friends. Also you had to take care not to grow different varieties of beans less than 10 metres apart so they would not cross-fertilise. As you say, not at all straight forward.
Whew!! It was the growing distances, etc for seed versus crop plants that started to do my head in. 🙀
I suppose the thing is, the ancestors would only have had their own local seed strains to save. And probably weren’t bothered about cross-pollination. When I read the early British agriculture reports for Kenya colony (1920s) it was something the officers could not cope with, the way African mallholder farmers produced a mishmash of bean and Indian corn types – and none of them considered ‘good’ strains. That they might be locally adapted and thus reliable (if not outstanding production-wise) did not seem to occur to them.
That’s really interesting— commodifying agricultural crops creates such a narrow, short-term mindset that is at variance with the realities of long term survival.
Absolutely. A plague on the people who promote patented GMO seed that also requires glyphosate drenching. The loss of local strains and diversity is a loss to us all.
Looks like a fun and colourful day out. I tease the OH about Morris dancing as he once shared a house with one in Wales 🙂
Morris dancing can definitely seem a teaseworthy pursuit – but there again when you bump into bunch it always lifts the spirits.
Gorgeous scarlet costumes. 😀 … and apples galore! … heaven! 😀
Heaven it was. Such jolliness all round.
😀