Appletastic!

It was an early celebration of Apple Day at Stanmer Park today (Apple Day is usually celebrated around 21st October and there are loads more events around the country and locally throughout October so we may yet get to something else too). This was in association with the Brighton Permaculture Association. Stanmer Park seems to be a good luck venue for events as everything we’ve ever been to there has been good – several Springwatch events, the annual Kite Festival and of course Davies and Scarlett had Forest School there too.

It was a free event which always puts me in a better mood for actually spending money while there but we had a very cheap day really. We started with a walk round the first field stalls which included some food and drink (locally hunted wild boar and other game, cider and apple juice from local apples), the Sussex Wildlife Trust, the RSPB and some apple-specific stalls including one running a quiz. We took a sheet and with some guess work and the help of google on our phones we all learnt stuff we didn’t know about apples. Then Davies and Scarlett both had a go at the peeler / corer /slicer machine on some local apples. There was one of these featured on The Big Food Fight (you remember, that quiz show we went all the way up to London to see being filmed and didn’t get to see being filmed!). One of those things you think is really cool but would never actually use in your own kitchen at home.

We shared a glass of very nice ginger cordial topped up with lemonade to make a ginger spritzer. Scarlett discovered it was particularly delicious with the slice apple dipped in it.

Next we went to the childrens’ activities which included apple bobbing, biting apples dangling on strings, making monsters from apples
which they left to enter into a competition and watching apples being pressed. I noticed two names I recognised among the apple monster entries so kept an eye out and sure enough we bumped into C, E, M and baby D which was nice :). Due to incompatible ages of children we never seem to see much of them which is a shame as I like C. They were supposed to come to Butser but had car trouble but are hoping to make Longleat which will be good :).

The apple pressing was interesting, not least because it was being mostly demonstrated by the two boys of the family who were engaging both children and adults to join in with chucking apples into the presser, pumping the juice with a hand pump and then directing them over to their parents to buy the juice you’d just helped make for a pound a glass. But they were also doing a mighty fine job of explaining all the processes too 🙂

all that brown mush in the bottom of that picture is the skin which makes great mulch or compost and is also used for horse feed apparently. Loved the fact that it was the windfall, rather rotten looking apples being used for this and the juice was delicious :).

We decided we were hungry so went back into the main field to have some lunch. We’d brought some food with us including a tin of readymixed pimms for me which went down very well :). While we were sitting a stallholder came over to say he was doing children’s recycled materials workshops so when we’d finished eating we wandered over there. He was making wallets out of old juice tetrapaks which is something we have tried,unsuccessfully to do at home so it looked pretty interesting. Sadly it was only after he’d hooked us in and had the children selecting tetrapaks to use he mentioned there was a £2 each charge for materials. I was a bit pissed off about that as he should have said so before, all of the other activities were free, there was no sign up to say it and I felt he had been quite aggressive in his sales pitch given he’d come over to us too. Finally, given the ‘materials’ were what most people would consider rubbish and probably didn’t cost £2 each even when filled with the juice it was a bit of a rip off. It seemed churlish to make a point for £4 though and the kids wanted to do it so I paid him and then he basically made the wallets himself getting the kids to do really menial bits like ‘just snip this bit here with the scissors’. Ah well, we’ve wasted worse £4s and then Ady found a tenner on the floor so we all felt a bit better about it! 😆

We walked over to look at the sheep next – a small pen with a couple of sheep in and some information about grazing sheep in the area. I picked up a leaflet about being a volunteer lookerer which looks really interesting so have applied for the course 🙂 How cool would that be on my CV – part time library assistant, part time shepherd! 😆 and coming hot on the heels of being really impressed with this which I saw on TV yesterday!

We then joined one of the hourly orchard guided tours which lasted pretty much a whole hour. There are two orchards there, one is between 70 and 90 years old, the other is about 50 years old. One is in almost constant shade, the other in sunlight so they have differing yields. There are some very rare and Sussex specific apple varieties there and they do loads of work and run courses on looking after them. I learnt apple trees can live for 100 years and with careful pruning can fruit throughout, the ratio of cookers to eaters there is 50:50 in terms of trees but the cookers are bigger trees and tend to harvest more so there are more cookers than eaters harvested. This is not in line with current demand which is more for eating apples, rather than a higher demand for cooking apples of 50 years ago. We learnt about ideal pruning for apple trees, what flora and fauna surround them and traditional orchard floors and various other apple facts and trivia. Davies, particularly was really interested too.

We stayed in the orchard for a spot of tree climbing and some swinging

before declaring it ice cream o’clock and heading to the tearooms for icecreams. We had a quick look at the donkey wheel which was used to pull water up from the well that served the village. There is a small rural museum there which looks really interesting but we ran out of time to look at properly today, must remember to visit again soon though.

We headed back to the main field and with only half an hour before the quiz competition prize draw we decided to sit and wait to see if we’d won anything. The kids went off to run around and I enjoyed a very nice pint of cloudy cider 🙂

We didn’t win but the kids had another go on the peeler apple machine each and Scarlett bought another ginger spritzer to dip hers in before we headed back to the car.

Back home the kids had a bath and then played DS – they have a new game called Ant Colony or something which they are both loving. Apparently the connecting features are rubbish so they are playing seperately but sitting side by side and working together to remain at the same level :). Ady cooked a lovely roast chicken and I played with my phone which the tariff for internet use is now live for so I can use all the features properly. I looked at some of the downloadable software.

We ate dinner, all watched the X Factor and the kids went to bed. It’s been a lovely weekend :). We debated chucking the little tent in the car and heading for Dorset yesterday lunchtime for a spot of micro camping and it would have been lovely but I think we made the most of staying here instead 🙂