Tim Foster
October is the time for apples, however you choose to enjoy them...
Autumn is definitely the season of fruitfulness and its pretty mellow too, but it is specifically October that shouts ‘apples.’ It is the month when ‘apple days’ abound, celebrated in many places in this region. they vary from an excuse for a mini-festival to the proper apple-centred merrymaking: apple pressing, apple tasting and selling apple products (cakes, trees, juice and, of course, the juice when it has gone off called something like ‘cyder’).
Apple Day is actually a fairly recent construct and perhaps replaces the old harvest festival for some people. Harvest festivals, where I grew up, seemed to consist of taking a tin of baked beans to the local church where there was a giant, plaited, rock-hard loaf on the altar.
Apple Days have developed in to valuable community events. there is usually some rather splendid music (though not much of it is focused on apples - Gladys Knight and the Pips?) and the occasional morris dancer may jingle their way in.
When I wert a lad, October also meant apple games, though this was at the end of the month before Hallowe’en became the execrable ‘trick or treat.’ these games all seem to have disappeared now and when I think of the hazards involved, maybe it is not surprising. there were apples on strings: I remember standing in a neighbour’s garage with similar aged reprobates each trying to take a bite out of a swinging apple suspended from a rafter, without using hands and without knocking out front teeth.
Bobbing for apples was also about trying to bite fruit using just the mouth, this time with the added frisson of drowning. We all knelt around a water-filled tin bath in which the apples floated along with dead leaves, earwigs etc. the first child to extricate an apple won – the apple, I think. Inevitably, the winner was labelled ‘big mouth’ by the others and the whole thing degenerated as heads were pushed in the tin bath and everything got very wet. Happy times.
toffee apples weren’t a game as such but there seemed to be a race to see who could unstick their apple, hands and face from the soft furnishings before mother came back in the room.
the domesticated apple is not, disap- pointingly, native to the uk but the varieties we have most certainly are. there are varieties local to every part of the country and round these ’ere parts we have ‘Court of Wick,’ ‘Beauty of Bath,’ ‘Ashton Bitter’ and, of course, ‘Kuldzhinka Krupnoplod Aya.’ Some raised at the now-defunct Long Ashton Research Station, near Bristol, ended in ‘Cross,’ such as ‘Cheddar Cross,’ ‘newport Cross’ and ‘Fedupand Cross’ (OK, that last one isn’t real).
there is often a question about windfalls, not so much what to do with them (we’ll save that for another time but it might involve some whittling), but why?
Apples are on the ground for a number of reasons: for example, they may have been forced there (hence the name windfalls). there are also large machines that will grip a tree trunk, mainly cider trees and shake it violently to dislodge the fruit. this is purely to make picking easier (from the ground where we are, rather than up in the air where it is more problematic – and fun). there is even a machine with a big spiked roller to collect the fallen fruit so with careful management we can get away with making a pint of cider without actually touching any fruit.
Windfalls could be there because the variety drops fruit when it is ripe: ‘Beauty of Bath’ is a culprit meaning you have a choice of slightly under ripe (or just ripe if you’re lucky) picked from the tree or fully ripe but potentially bruised on the floor.
the other reason for windfalls is there is something wrong with them: grubs, rots, etc and the tree gets rid of them early. Hence the whittling when you come to use them.
Well, some apples have ripened and gone and windfalls under all trees have been tripping us up for at least two months now, so what is all this about October? It is this month that we should be picking all the remaining apples whether they are ripe or not.
If they are not ripe, they should be stored until they are ready – it depends on the variety. they could be left on the tree but, as the saying goes (I just made it up): if they’re not picked and packed, they’re pecked and pocked.