Today, 21st October is Apple Day.
Apple Day was launched in 1990 by Common Ground. The aspiration was to create a
calendar custom, an autumn holiday. From the start, Apple Day was
intended to be both a celebration and a demonstration of the variety we
are in danger of losing, not simply in apples, but in the richness and
diversity of landscape, ecology and culture too. It has also played a
part in raising awareness in the provenance and traceability of food.
Here's some information about the very first Apple Day taken from the
Common Ground Website
"The first Apple Day celebrations, in the old Apple Market in London’s
Covent Garden, brought fruit to the market after 16 years’ absence.
Forty stalls were taken. Fruit growers and nurseries producing and
selling a wide variety of apples and trees rubbed shoulders with
juice-and cider-makers, as well as writers and illustrators with their
apple books.
Representatives of the WI came laden with chutneys, jellies and pies.
Mallorees School from North London demonstrated its orchard classroom,
while the Hertfordshire & Middlesex Wildlife Trust explained how it
manages its orchard for wildlife. Marks & Spencer helped to start a
trend by offering tastings of some of the 12 ‘old varieties’ they had on
sale that autumn. Organic growers were cheek by jowl with beekeepers,
amidst demonstrations of traditional and modern juice presses, a
calvados still and a cider bar run by the Campaign for Real Ale. Experts
such as Joan Morgan identified apples and offered advice, while apple
jugglers and magicians entertained the thousands of visitors – far more
than we had expected – who came on the day.
For two weeks before Apple Day, in a marquee on the Piazza, Common
Ground exhibited the photographs of West Country Orchards we had
commissioned from James Ravilious alongside a display of more than 100
different apple varieties. People were amazed at the diversity of
shapes, sizes and colours. We also offered lunchtime tastings of some of
the varieties on show, and many people bemoaned the lack of such choice
on supermarket shelves.
We will never know just how many people came to that first
celebration – it was certainly thousands and even now we meet people who
effuse about it as a memorable event. Many wanted it to be repeated,
but our intention was to spread the idea far and wide, encouraging
people to celebrate Apple Day for themselves in their own city, village,
parish, allotment or garden orchard.
And so the tradition of Apple Day began. Over the next few years, the
number of events being organised around the country grew from more than
60 in 1991 to 300 by 1997 and over 600 in 1999, some attracting
thousands of people. Apple Day has played a part in raising awareness
not only of the importance of orchards to our landscape and culture, but
also in the provenance and traceability of food. It has been one
impetus behind the developing network of farmers’ markets and is helping
people everywhere to discover they are not alone in valuing the links
between food and the land, between natural resource use and the impact
we have on nature."
Image via
Common Ground
