Celebration of the Apple Day
NORTHERN FELLS VILLAGE AGENTS CELEBRATION OF THE APPLE DAY
The first Northern Fells Village Agents Celebration of the Apple Day on Sunday 30th October was a great success. Around two hundred local people came and went throughout the day.
We were very fortunate to have Margaret Brough and Joan Gate to do some splendid cookery demonstrations for us and very grateful to them for donating their time for the community. We did have a slight panic when we nearly served up one of Margaret's delicious ‘one I prepared earlier' apple pies from the oven for the lunches! Margaret and Joan's easy manner and friendly chatter made the cooking look manageable but also their clear instructions gave everybody the confidence to have a go themselves. Joan's demonstration of a mint and apple jelly and subsequent tasting certainly made me think I'd have go at making some myself in the future.
We had two representatives from the North Cumbria Orchard Group who did four apple pressings throughout the day and were on hand to give advice and had some apple trees for sale. The juice produced was then given out for tasting which proved interesting as the four varieties we had kept for pressing were very different. Some very small yellow apples produced a very sweet syrupy juice whilst a pressing from some bramleys was quite sharp but sweeter than expected.
Julia Trotter, at first dressed as a witch, assisted by her mother Grace Turner did a splendid job of providing games for our younger visitors, there were some lovely Halloween games as well as traditional apple bobbing which was a huge hit with all ages ... as was the face painting when one of our first customers was David Kerry alias Count Dracula!!
We had 56 entries for the Children's Apple Art competition was a lovely colourful display on the wall in the Oak Room for all to appreciate whist they had their lunches. Pre School & 4 years, 1st - Sophie Hadley, 2nd - Josh Little, 3rd - Phoebe Jackson. 5 - 7 years, 1st - Zak Ostle, 2nd - Isabel Russell, 3rd - J.J.Pattinson, 8 - 11 years. 1st - Joe Trotter, 2nd - Zoe Glendinning, 3rd - Isobel Ryder. They were given lovely Halloween theme prizes and a unique Northern Fells Village Agents rosette. The reddest apple was won by Liz Berry and the greenest by Kate Ferriman. Best apple pie was awarded to Mandy Wilson.
We were fortunate to have three WI stalwarts in Pat Shaw, Pauline Woolfenden and Bridget Archer along with Sheila Magee from Lamonby to serve lunches. Our ‘A Team' served nearly 100 soup and ploughman's lunches during the day along with apple juice, tea, coffee, apple pie, cakes and tray bakes. We also had scrummy toffee apples made by Audrey Johnson and Kate Ferryman
Edward Spratt did sterling work on selling raffle tickets, quizzes and apple juice for which we are very grateful.
We also had on sale our first 82 bottles of 2011 Northern Fells Community Apple which sold out on the day. We should have some further juice for sale in the next few weeks.
This was a huge community effort with help and participation from all corners of the community, one lady commented that it had provided a lovely atmosphere for a good chat and catch up with friends and neighbours. We all had an appletastic day! Philippa Groves