Apple Day

Last updated
Chepstow Apple Day 2014, featuring obscure apple varieties for sale, apple carving, apple peeling contests and a singing club Apple Day singing, Chepstow Dril Hall 2014.jpg
Chepstow Apple Day 2014, featuring obscure apple varieties for sale, apple carving, apple peeling contests and a singing club

Apple Day is an annual celebration of apples and orchards, held in October. It is celebrated mainly in the United Kingdom. It traditionally falls on 21 October, the date of the first such event in 1990, but events are held throughout the month. [1] It is commonly a weekend event, usually taking place on the Saturday and Sunday closest to 30 October.[ citation needed ]

Contents

Apple Day events can be large or small, from apple games in a garden to large village fairs with cookery demonstrations, games, apple identification, juice and cider, gardening advice, and the sale of many hundreds of apple varieties.

History

Apple Day was initiated by Common Ground on 21 October 1990 at an event in Covent Garden, London, and has been celebrated in each subsequent year. [2] By 2000 the day was celebrated in more than 600 events around the United Kingdom. [3] Common Ground describe the day as a way of celebrating and demonstrating that variety and richness matter to a locality and that it is possible to effect change in your place. Common Ground has used the apple as a symbol of the physical, cultural and genetic diversity we should not let slip away. In linking particular apples with their place of origin, they hope that orchards will be recognized and conserved for their contribution to local distinctiveness, including the rich diversity of wild life they support.

Media

"Apple Day" is the title of a song by UK songwriter Phil Baggaley, formerly of songwriting duo Phil and John, and founder of Gold Records. The song was sung by the Christian gospel group Harbour Lights (no longer extant) on their 2006 album "Leaving Safe Anchorage". The song refers to Apple Day - and likens the converting of old bruised apples into cider to spiritual renewal and invites the listener to participate with the words "Meet me down at Apple Day, come and bring the fruit that's fallen, we'll turn it into something new .."

Apple Day is celebrated by the villagers in the radio soap-opera The Archers . [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bastille Day</span> French national day

Bastille Day is the common name given in English-speaking countries to the national day of France, which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In French, it is formally called the Fête nationale française ; legally it is known as le 14 juillet.

Perry, also known as pear cider, is an alcoholic beverage made from fermented pears, traditionally the perry pear. It has been common for centuries in England, particularly in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and Worcestershire. It is also made in parts of South Wales and France, especially Normandy and Anjou, and in Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apple cider</span> Non-alcoholic apple beverage

Apple cider is the name used in the United States and Canada for an unfiltered, unsweetened, non-alcoholic beverage made from apples. Though typically referred to simply as "cider" in the United States, it is not to be confused with the alcoholic beverage known as cider in other places, which is called "hard cider" in the US. Outside of the United States and Canada, it is commonly referred to as cloudy apple juice to distinguish it from clearer, filtered apple juice and hard cider.

Bulmers cider is one of a number of brands owned by British cider maker H. P. Bulmer of Hereford. It is one of the biggest selling British bottled cider brands in the UK because it has the highest concentration of apples, with a number of variants including Bulmers Original & Pear. It should not be confused with Bulmers Irish Cider, sold outside the Republic of Ireland as Magners.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Twelfth Night (holiday)</span> Christian holiday

Twelfth Night is a Christian festival on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, marking the coming of the Epiphany. Different traditions mark the date of Twelfth Night as either 5 January or 6 January, depending on whether the counting begins on Christmas Day or 26 December.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wassail</span> Hot mulled cider

Wassail is a beverage made from hot mulled cider and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, an ancient English Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good cider apple harvest the following year.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cider apple</span> Fruit used for making apple cider

Cider apples are a group of apple cultivars grown for their use in the production of cider. Cider apples are distinguished from "cookers" and "eaters", or dessert apples, by their bitterness or dryness of flavour, qualities which make the fruit unpalatable but can be useful in cidermaking. Some apples are considered to occupy more than one category.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wassailing</span> Christmas custom, originally English

The tradition of wassailing falls into two distinct categories: the house-visiting wassail and the orchard-visiting wassail. The house-visiting wassail is the practice of people going door-to-door, singing and offering a drink from the wassail bowl in exchange for gifts; this practice still exists, but has largely been displaced by carolling. The orchard-visiting wassail refers to the ancient custom of visiting orchards in cider-producing regions of England, reciting incantations and singing to the trees to promote a good harvest for the coming year. Notable traditional wassailing songs include "Here We Come a-Wassailing", "Gloucestershire Wassail", and "Gower Wassail".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brogdale</span> Human settlement in England

Brogdale is a hamlet in Kent, England, immediately south of the M2 motorway, 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Faversham. It is one of several hamlets making up the civil parish of Ospringe and is in the Borough of Swale. Its western half is in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bramley apple</span> Apple cultivar

Malus domestica is a cultivar of apple that is usually eaten cooked due to its sourness. The variety comes from a pip planted by Mary Ann Brailsford. The Concise Household Encyclopedia states, "Some people eat this apple raw in order to cleanse the palate, but Bramley's seedling is essentially the fruit for tart, pie, or dumpling." Once cooked, however, it has a lighter flavour. A peculiarity of the variety is that when cooked it becomes golden and fluffy. Vitamin C 15mg/100g.

Common Ground is a United Kingdom charity and lobby group. Founded in 1982 by Susan Clifford and Angela King, Common Ground aims to promote "local distinctiveness".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carhampton</span> Human settlement in England

Carhampton is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, 4 miles (6.4 km) to the east of Minehead.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whimple</span> Village in Devon, England

Whimple is a village and civil parish in East Devon in the English county of Devon, approximately 9 miles (14 km) due east of the city of Exeter, and 3 miles (4.8 km) from the nearest small town, Ottery St Mary. It has a population of 1,642, recounted to 1,173 for the village alone in the United Kingdom Census 2011. The electoral ward with the same name had a population of 2,380 at the above census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apple Wassail</span> Form of wassailing

The Apple Wassail is a traditional form of wassailing practiced in the cider orchards of southern England during the winter. There are many well recorded instances of the Apple Wassail in the early modern period. The first recorded mention was at Fordwich, Kent, in 1585, by which time groups of young men would go between orchards performing the rite for a reward. The practice was sometimes referred to as "howling". On Twelfth Night, men would go with their wassail bowl into the orchard and go about the trees. Slices of bread or toast were laid at the roots and sometimes tied to branches. Cider was also poured over the tree roots. The ceremony is said to "bless" the trees to produce a good crop in the forthcoming season. Among the most famous wassail ceremonies are those in Whimple, Devon and Carhampton, Somerset, both on 17 January.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apple (symbolism)</span>

Apples appear in many religious traditions, often as a mystical or forbidden fruit. One of the problems identifying apples in religion, mythology and folktales is that as late as the 17th century, the word "apple" was used as a generic term for all (foreign) fruit other than berries, but including nuts. This term may even have extended to plant galls, as they were thought to be of plant origin. For instance, when tomatoes were introduced into Europe, they were called "love apples". In one Old English work, cucumbers are called eorþæppla, just as in French, Dutch, Hebrew, Afrikaans, Persian and Swiss German as well as several other German dialects, the words for potatoes mean "earth-apples". In some languages, oranges are called "golden apples" or "Chinese apples". Datura is called "thorn-apple".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whimple Wassail</span>

The Whimple Wassail is an orchard-visiting wassail ceremony which takes place in the Devon village of Whimple annually every Old Twelfth Night. The Whimple Wassail was first mentioned by the Victorian author and folklorist Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould in his book Devon Characters and Strange Events.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sagardotegi</span>

A sagardotegi is a type of cider house found in the Basque Country where Basque cider and traditional foods such as cod omelettes are served. Modern sagardotegis can broadly be described as a cross between a steakhouse and a cider house.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cider</span> Fermented alcoholic beverage from apple juice

Cider is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. Cider is widely available in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The UK has the world's highest per capita consumption, as well as the largest cider-producing companies. Ciders from the South West of England are generally stronger. Cider is also popular in many Commonwealth countries, such as India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. As well as the UK and its former colonies, cider is popular in Portugal, France, northern Italy, and northern Spain (specifically Galicia and northern Asturias. Central Europe also has its own types of cider with Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse producing a particularly tart version known as Apfelwein. In the U.S., varieties of fermented cider are often called hard cider to distinguish alcoholic cider from non-alcoholic apple cider or "sweet cider", also made from apples. In Canada, cider cannot contain less than 2.5% or over 13% absolute alcohol by volume.

Cider in the United Kingdom is widely available at pubs, off licences, and shops. It has been made in regions of the country where cider apples were grown since Roman times; in those regions it is intertwined with local culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Community orchard</span>

A community orchard is a collection of fruit trees shared by communities and growing in publicly accessible areas such as public greenspaces, parks, schools, churchyards, allotments or, in the US, abandoned lots. Such orchards are a shared resource and not managed for personal or business profit. Income may be generated to sustain the orchard as a charity, community interest company, or other non-profit structure. What they have in common is that they are cared for by a community of people.

References

  1. "Apple day: A celebration of core values". Telegraph.co.uk. 30 September 2011.
  2. "Celebrate the Apple". BelfastTelegraph.co.uk.
  3. "Blackberries and apples are season's best". Derby Telegraph.[ permanent dead link ]
  4. "Login". Facebook .