The sun shone for apple day, on September 29th, and the crowds came out. A big thank you to everyone who joined us and helped to pick and press apples to turn them into juice. Thanks also to the wasps, who left us alone, unlike last year. We only saw one all day which may be of concern, if you’re a wasp but was one thing less for us to worry about.

Another big thank you to people who brought bags of apples from their own gardens. We had a smaller crop than usual in the community orchard but the additional contributions kept the press busy all afternoon and everyone went away with fresh apple juice. 

The home-baking stall was also busy, with plenty of apple-themed cakes, crumbles and flapjacks to go round. 

We’re so blessed to have a lovely, enclosed space in the orchard, where everyone can hang out and watch, as their children gather apples from the trees up the slopes. It’s always good to see the youngsters doing the work! We’re also lucky to have good friends of the woodland group who mucked in all weekend, to get the marquee up and help out, wherever we needed extra hands. 

Andrew Lear, aka ‘appletreeman’, wasn’t able to join us this year but we managed to put on a good display of apples - everything from the enormous cooker-cum-eater, Howgate Wonder, to the bright red Discoveries. 

We had a new, special guest, Cameron Diekonigen, a mycologist from Scotlandwell, who had the great idea of running a guided fungal walk in the morning, in Kilmagad Wood, and then inviting his group of 20 people to stay on for apple day.

It was a great success.  The group came back with a huge collection of fungi which they identified and displayed on another table. 

The children also had plenty to do. When they weren’t clambering amongst the trees, they had quizzes and games to keep them occupied, including the ever-popular task of creating all sorts of weird and wonderful constructions out of apple cubes and cocktail sticks.

In all, around 150 people joined us and we received donations of £377 - which included £60 kindly donated by Cameron from his fungal walk.  This all helps to pay for the costs of running the event and looking after the orchard during the rest of the year, so we are very grateful for everyone’s generosity.