Windmill Harvest Celebration

Today was Windmill's first Harvest Celebration for the Climate Friendly Gardeners project and we are delighted at how well it went. It was a lovely sunny day, and the temperature hit 28C, which was great for our visitors, but did kind of scupper our Autumnal plans to serve lots of hot soup and make popcorn using the fire-pit! Still, we adjusted to be more hot weather appropriate, everything seemed to work and over 50 people paid us a visit.

The Harvest Celebration begins. 

Visitors enjoying the food tasting table

Our huge Brandywine tomatoes delighted some of the visitors

We had all kinds of activities, including apple pressing with Rowan and Ash - (thanks to Framework for providing the apples and some of the labour for that), traditional and modern outdoor games with Matt, like apple bobbing and giant jenga, "pin the worm on the apple", making Japanese seed bombs with Khaled, apple tasting with 17 different varieties run by Helen and Ellis, lots of different foods to taste made using produce from the Gardens, and freshly made apple pancakes thanks to Jeremy.

The apple pressing was very popular

Matt entertains one of our younger visitors

Making Japanese-style seed bombs with Khaled

The well-stocked apple-tasting table, with 16 varieties
from  John Hempsall's Heritage Orchard at East Markham

Jeremy's apple pancakes disappeared as quickly as he could make them.

There was also a produce competition, with a good number of entries, especially in the jam section, other categories being longest marrow, heaviest marrow, best chutney or pickle, strangest vegetable and best display of fruit, veg, flowers and herbs. The winners were decided by Rukia and her young helpers, who particularly enjoyed tasting the jam!

Some of the entries for out produce competition

The "Best Display of Produce" entries

Visitors admire the entries

The Winner's role of honour

Best Jam - Kath Williams (runner up Gill Dickinson)
Best Chutney - Rose Perkins, (runner up Kath Williams)
Strangest fruit or veg - Sally White
Longest marrow - Dave and Pam Willey
Heaviest marrow - Framework
Best display of produce - Dave and Pam Willey (runner up Sally White)

Dave and Pam's prize-winning Produce Display

Sally collects her strangest vegetable prize for her many-legged carrot

Thanks go to everyone who took part in the competitions, and we were so pleased to see so many entries. And we were also delighted to see so many volunteers on the day - Claire, Ellis, Dan, Helen, Meirion, Matt, Khaled, Jeremy, Ash and Rowan all did a great job, and coped well with being ordered around by Tracey. Craig also stepped into the breach and took most of the photos you'll see here. Thanks also to the Keyworth Abundance Project for the loan of their apple press and scratter.

The tasting and apple-preparation table in full swing

We've had some lovely positive feedback from the day and we definitely hope to run it again next year - hopefully with an intact polytunnel!