Another wonderful Apple day held on the 6th October 2024 in the St Ives Community Orchard with sunshine, dancing, lots of apple picking, juicing and drinking. After having to reschedule the event from the previous Sunday due to stormy weather, the event went ahead despite the heavy rain all morning. Setting up wasn’t much fun for the volunteers but amazingly, just as the event started, the rain stopped, making way for the sun to shine all afternoon on the estimated 300 people who came along to enjoy the event.
The Core was open for refreshments and cake and had a lovely atmosphere with Paul Brown playing jazz piano and Pip Wright leading some choir singing and introducing a new wassail song that she made specially for our orchard. Chris & Claire from Hortus were set up in the Core showing design potential plans for the new teaching garden and getting feedback. Have a look at these amazing plans and give us more feedback on //form.jotform.com/242812721032344
A demonstration of the ancient Celtic Martial art – Cornish Wrestling or Wrasslin drew an interested crowd. Two wrestlers demonstrated various throws before inviting members of the audience to have a go.
Cornish Wrassling
Tate St Ives crew came along and helped lots of adults and kids make some wonderful headdresses and art using apples.
Resilient orchards, Sam and Shelley brought along their community scratter and apple press and with many willing hands, pressed fresh apple juice for everyone to enjoy.
There was plenty food for everyone. The day before, pizza queen Gisela had made up all the pizza dough needed and volunteers had cooked up a massive, delicious bean chilli. The earth oven was fired up and volunteers cooked up an incredible 94 pizzas with a wide choice of toppings.
Some delicious apple pies were made and many people enjoyed the tasting and judging of them with the winner being Lilly Taylor with Jazmin Taylor a very close second. Sarah Taylor & family provided lovely craft activities, making art using leaves and Georgina & family made a wonderful buzz-off machine and a treasure hunt for kids to enjoy.
Live music – The Petty Criminals with guest performer Tim Burt, a large very funky band from St Austell called Funk, Soul, Other and the amazing Sandy Acre 7 band were all very much enjoyed.
The harvest table displayed a wonderful assortment of different types of apples, berries and vegetables grown in the orchard and the Orchard bar was very busy serving cider, beer and orchard-pressed apple juice.
Thank you to everyone who came up to our Apple day, to all the volunteers who helped make it happen, for the cake donations, lovely feedback and happy faces. Also thanks to Rob Shirley for taking most of these photos.
A huge thank you to Tesco for funding this event.
//www.tescoplc.com/strongerstarts
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