We're still reeling from how well the Apple Harvest Celebration at Windmill went on Saturday. Around 80 visitors and lots of our volunteers had a great day getting involved in lots of activities and enjoying fantastic food.
 |
| The fabulous spread of healthy home-made goodies |
 |
| Which one to choose first? |
We were lucky enough to be joined for the day by Mark Manders, a local chainsaw sculptor who made the beautiful bench in Paula's garden, and did demonstrations in the orchard for us during the event. We also welcomed Friends of the Earth, who came with their
Bee Cause stall.
 |
| Friends of the Earth's Bee Cause stall |
 |
| Mark hard at work on the chainsaw sculpture |
 |
| The finished sculpture |
|
Scratting the apples before pressing helps to release the juice
|
 |
| Pressing apple juice was a bit hit with all age groups |
 |
|
Trying out the apple slinky maker (yes, it really does do that!)
|
New recruit Alex turned up to get the clay oven fired up, so we could have the first cooked food from it during the event. Sibel arrived to demonstrate how to make her famous shepherd's salad, which went down a storm, along with Jeremy's apple pancakes with toffee sauce and a huge range of other food which volunteers provided for the day, including parsnip and apple quiche which was surprisingly delicious and we think may be a new invention! The clay oven was fired properly for the first time, and we used it to cook pizza which disappeared as soon as each one came out of the oven, so we think it was probably quite good...
|
|
Jeremy hard at work making apple pancakes
|
 |
| The clay oven heating up - burning well |
 |
| First pizza goes in the clay oven |
 |
| First pizza, fresh out of the new clay oven |
The site was looking fabulous because we had enrolled the day as an event for the Big Dig Edible Open Gardens project, which meant they helped us to advertise it, and provided some lovely bunting and stickers for each visitor.
 |
The Breathe Easy group made a good start to our well-dressing
showing our Windmill logo |
 |
| Filling in more detail on the well dressing |
 |
You can start to see the picture now - mostly done with
petals and peppercorns. |
 |
The finished well dressing - exhuberant rather than
accurate - but beautiful non the less!
|
We were delighted at how many people entered our competitions. These were judged by Rosy, which was entirely appropriate as she has just become the
Food Initiatives Group worker for the area (or Fig Local as it's known). We were also very pleased at how many people wanted to see how the clay oven was working and those who wanted to tell us about their experiences of using clay ovens in other countries. We are hoping to run the oven again soon, and we'd like to invite anyone who wants to, to bring along food to cook in it (let us know first, if you are interested).
 |
| Rosy took her job as judge very seriously! |
 |
| Some of the competition entries |
 |
The winning entry in the best display of fruit and veg category
A well-deserve win by David Wile - 2nd Year in a row! |
 |
| Stick the worm on the apple game - painted by volunteer Chris |
 |
| Apple tasting |
Thanks to all who attended and a huge thank you to everyone who helped make the day so much fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment