Celebrate local produce as Apple Day returns to Cowdray Farm Shop

The ever-popular celebration of locally sourced fruit will take place at the farm shop from 10am to 4pm on Saturday, October 14, and should feature a range of appropriately apple themed activities.

Visitors will get the chance to juice their own home-grown apples in a press, there will be food tastings hosted by local food suppliers, the opportunity to sample a range of treats created by the farm shop’s pastry chef and butchery team and a range of other activities.

“Last year, the local community really embraced Apple Day, and we are delighted to host it again in October,” said Nick McDonald, Cowdray’s Estate Land Manager and one of the lead organisers of Cowdray’s Apple Day.

“Remember to bring your own apples to the Farm Shop if you have them and a container to take home freshly pressed juice. We have been harvesting our own apples across the Estate in anticipation of Apple Day. Everyone is welcome and entry is free.”

Donations from this year’s Apple Day will go to the estate’s charity for 2023: The Kent, Surrey and Sussex Air Ambulance Service.

Apple Day was first launched back in 1990, by an organisation called Common Ground, as a means of raising awareness of the origins of our food. The first ever event took place in the Old Apple Market in London’s Covent Gardens, and brought fruit to the market for the first time in 16 years. Since then, the event has moved from strength to strength and it is now celebrated in towns, villages, communities and parishes all over the country.

“From the start, Apple Day was intended to be both a celebration and a demonstration of the variety we are in danger of losing, not simply in apples, but in the richness and diversity of landscape, ecology and culture too. It has also played a part in raising awareness in the provenance and traceability of food,” the Common Ground website says.

“We have used the apple as a symbol of what is being lost in many aspects of our lives and shown that anyone can take positive action towards change”