Local Loves: Apple Day

Apple Day was started in 1990 to celebrate apples and orchards and the local food landscape. It falls on 21st October and this year Cockington held their festivities on the 16th. Yesterday. And we loved it. Apple Day is one of our favourite days of the year. Better than Christmas in my opinion. Cockington court is turned over to local craft people, food producers and cider... it's a great atmosphere with everyone sharing the food, drinks and fun. We've blogged about it before  (go check out that post for pictures of the rangers working the amazing Victorian apple press) but every year is different and we managed to stuff ourselves with different foods. Onward to Apple Day!

"Boyfriend! Stop taking pictures and hurry up!"

We don't drink. At one point we tried buying cider for my Dad but he said it was strong enought to remove paint. We assume it is too West Country for him. However there where some non alcoholic samples available. Tea's Me were there, Lori from Shute Fruit had her amazing elderflower cordial and I bought some amazing Strawberry and Apple Juice from Milltop Orchard. It had the taste of happiness so I drank a small bottle for lunch. You'll notice that Tea's Me is the least local of all three, coming from 20ish miles away in Exeter. Quite impressive. We also bought a bottle of the freshly pressed apple juice straight off the Victorian apple press.

"Can you try to make that look less phallic?"  "...no"

Preserves? We tried everything but only bought from Lori (once again, Shute Fruit if you can get there go there!) partly because she is the best and partly because I don't mind admitting that her jams and jellies are better than mine. We bought Stephen's favourite; the hedgerow jelly, and my Dad's favourite; the strawberry jam. Last year I helped Lori at a Preserves Class at Occombe Farm, they have another one scheduled for this year. If you are tempted, go for it, you won't regret it. Anyway back to apple day. We also stuffed our faces at the vegetarian food stand including trying our very first corn dog. Being British we've never really been exposed to corn dogs before but I can say that we are corn dog converts. Cornverts? No, never mind...

"What am I going to do with you?"

Fresh produce is another big win. We got to meet the woman behind our Riverford deliveries. She is lovely and it was nice to put a face to the box that appears on our doorstep fortnightly. I bought a bag of lovely chillies from Dartmoor Chill Farm and discussed the bad weather this year and how it affected yields (you can probably tell this is one of my favourite subjects right now!) and, as you can't go to apple day without buying apples, I came home with a bag of Egremont Russets (my favourite, in the front) and bramleys for cooking. Score!

The Star Of The Day