Apples in Abundance

If you check over there << (and down a bit) on the side bar you'll see a link to Urban Explorer. This is a great mailing list for people with children in London - each Thursday you get an email with ten things happening in the capital that weekend. For lovers of last minute plans like us it's great and often inspires an adventure or two for our family.
This week no.3 on the list was Abundance in Chiswick. I dutifully checked out what it was all about online as it was listed as a free event right on our doorstep.

This is the idea:
Abundance have mapped out various fruit trees across Chiswick, mainly apples, but some pear trees, grape vines and and we spotted quinces too. Each year they organise volunteers and local school children to harvest the fruit. Then people cook with it, make chutneys and jams and all sorts of delectable delights (toffee apple anyone?) which they sell at Abundance day along with pressing all the rest of the apples into one of the most delicious glasses of apple juice I've ever tasted.
Pretty great right?



Just a small sample of the apple harvest.



Pulping the apples, which then get transferred to the massive apple press



Add a bit of manpower and the juice flows...



Pie and juice.



They also had various other faye like activities and crafty things going on - like this apple peel competition.



Coco made a fruit bouquet.





We had to eat the fruit bouquet before getting on the bikes... half an hour in the making, two minutes to demolish between them.

From now on the annual Abundance day is going to be firmly locked down in my diary every year. Local, seasonal, edible - a bit of country-in-the-city and just generally a great idea to use the produce right under our noses.
I'm even thinking of forcing Hugh to become an Abundance volunteer, hell, I might even give up some time for it.

Annoyingly one of the things we didn't do on our, frankly way over optimistic, to-do list this weekend was to cook some of our apple harvest from the garden (or go the the V&A Clara Button day or the Crafty Fox Market).
I might be baking this apple recipe sometime in the near future...