Apple Juice! Orchard, Wedn 8 Aug, 07

An open day at our West Bowling Community Orchard saw plenty of activity. A group of teenagers from the YMCA (BEES is part of YMCA Bradford) got stuck into re-woodchipping the path and a few participated in craft activities. We made bottle cap shakers and decorated them. We also helped a couple of the teenagers to produce drinks-can alcohol-stoves which was a big achievement. Once the stoves were finished they boiled a kettle over one and enjoyed a well earned cup of coffee. Lunch was a BBQ with BEES' charcoal that we made last Summer. The veggie burgers and sausages were cause for much protestation until the teenagers actually tasted them and they seemed to be converted!

The most exciting thing about the day was the inaugral outing of BEES' new apple press. It crushes apples then squeezes them so that most of the juice flows into a container. It's a fantastic olde-worldey machine and I'm sure it will have a nickname soon enough. This was a practice run for our bigger apple day event on Sat 13th October. Our apples will be ripe by then so this time round we bought in some boxes of English apples and made litres and litres of sweet and refreshing apple juice. It was very popular with our visitors from the West Bowling Youth Initiative. Come along to Apple Day in October and you'll be able to pick your own apple juice!

Apple Day

The weather was fine and the community orchard was buzzing for the annual apple day today.

It was a vey enjoyable day! My apple was identified (I say mine, my neighbour actually donated it, good of them). It was a massive Howgate Wonder. The book, that the very knowledgable lady had, said it was only of fair quality but the ones on sale there were described as sweet and pleasant which I prefer. I ate apple quish. It was so good I nearly had another helping but then I saw the puddings and chose two of them which were both outstanding. I also sampled some gorgeous, sweet apples.

Barbecue 9th July!

Another batch of charcoal turned out well today. The artist's charcoal experiment was a success and plans are afoot to produce on a larger scale.

And to celebrate this wonder of traditonal industry a barbecue is planned for the 9th July, 3.30pm. This will be at the Community Orchard in West Bowling http://www.civictrust.org.uk/regeneration/includes/Orchard.pdf The World Cup Final is at 7pm that day so it may be off to the pub around this time for those who are interested. Come on England! Everyone connected to BEEs (and friends) are welcome. BYO drink and food for the barbie. A few things may be provided. Please let me know if you want to make something to share around, that would be great! Cover will be available for any light rain showers. Downpours will be good for the orchard and we can all marvel at nature and stuff! Or go to the pub or someone's place. Anyone volunteer their place as a backup?

Come along for a taste of our hard work!

Thanks to Annie and Jack, the masked charcoal makers from the West, who helped out today.