Friday 13 October 2017

Mansbridge Apple Day 2017 Community Orchard

As we waited patiently to see what the weather would do, on our Apple Day at Mansbridge Community Orchard, my daughter and I baked a scrumptious seasonal Apple Cake to take along. 
We did eventually set the start time back a couple of hours, to dodge the rain and this did catch a couple of people out but fortunately, they all came back later and stayed on until the end of the day. 
Despite the grey skies, damp ground and dripping trees, we had a good turn out, with lots of new, local children joining in. The trees were filled with fruit, as they always are and teams of pickers were shuttling back and forth between the trees and the tables.
At the Southampton Woodcraft Folk base camp, apples were being enthusiastically sliced, diced and chopped up into smaller segments, which were then tipped into the scratting mills, pulped down and tipped into the various cider press baskets.
Then the press screws were turned down and the tastiest golden nectar began to flow by the gallon. People were dodging between the presses filling bottles, various containers or cups and glugging back the delicious apple juice. 
Altogether it was a very successful and fun day for everyone concerned; some people even found time to gather some walnuts from the massive tree nearby (I collected five kilos, in twenty minutes, the day before). 
According to some sources, it was said that in the 'golden age,' when men lived upon acorns the gods lived upon Walnuts, hence the name of Juglans, or Jupiter's nuts.



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