Monday 21 October 2013

Apple Daze


Red Elstar


Today is Apple Day in the UK, or at least the anniversary of the first apple day held in 1990, and October is these days the time for Apple Festivals all around the country.

We have been to a few events in the past few weeks, the largest and most impressive, of course, being the Apple Festival at the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale (near Faversham) in Kent.

We have enjoyed ourselves, despite the wet and sometimes cold weather, and have seen lots and lots of different apple varieties, tasted several, and bought a few.

We continue to be astonished by the diversity of sizes, shapes, colors, flavours and textures that apples come in, that we had no idea about until a few years ago.

The photos were taken by D, under challenging conditions. It was raining heavily a lot of the time, and by the end of the last day water had got inside the camera. Fortunately he managed to dry the camera out!

The apples in the photo above are Red Elstar. You can find out more about all the different apple varieties on the National Fruit Collection's website.

Another website that has lots of information about heritage apple varieties is Orange Pippin.


Edward VII

Edward VII



Lord Lambourne


Knobby Russet.

Knobby Russet


Starkrimson.

Starkrimson



Yellow Belleflower


September Beauty

September Beauty


Gelber Trierer Weinapfel

Gelbe Trierer Weinapfel


Francis

Francis


Pumpkin Sweet

Pumpkin Sweet



Wellspur Delicious


Woolbrook Russet

Woolbrook Russet


Below are photos of some of the apples on display indoors at Brogdale. This year's displays were arranged in alphabetical order.


Alastair Cannon White

Alastair Cannon White


Antonovka Grammovaya

Antonovka Grammovaya


Kaiser Franz Joseph

Kaiser Franz Joseph


More indoor displays from another festival.


Beauty of Hants

Beauty of Hants


Catshead

Catshead


George Cave

George Cave



Herring's Pippin


Hoary Morning

Hoary Morning


Powell's Russet

Powell's Russet


Red Ellison

Red Ellison


Sturmer Pippin

Sturmer Pippin


Below are three of the varieties that were for sale at one of the festivals.


Kidd's Orange Red box

Kidd's Orange Red



Ribston Pippin



Catherine


The Brogdale festival included pears as well as apples, so we also got a guided tour of the pear orchard.

Plymouth pears are very tiny pears that you wouldn't want to eat, but they are the ancestors of our modern pears, so they are in the collection as a genetic resource.


Plymouth pear

Plymouth pear


Black Worcester pear

Black Worcester pear


The Black Worcester pear is a cooking pear,  with an interesting history involving Queen Elizabeth I, and it appears on the Worcester coat of arms. You can read more about it here.

I just realised that I never got around to blogging about our previous visits to apple festivals in 2011 and 2012, so I will try to write up some of those  in a later post.

Also tasting notes to come.