We watched the apple juice being made in front of our eyes | Comrie Apple Festival
Photo credit: Blue Noun
Happy Apple Day!
Hello, English language learners,
Today, Comrie Community Orchard celebrated its annual apple harvest with a festival featuring local artisanal makers and their produce, activities for families – and a whole lot of apples!
In our language school blog, we’re going to share the sights, smells and tastes of this small, local festival which celebrates a community orchard, fresh, organic local produce and the community itself.
At our English language school, we’re all about encounters with people – our Meet the Makers Immersion English programme is based on it!
Immersion English experiences are just the best way to get you working on your English language skills: out of the classroom and taking part in real-life conversations.
Fresh apple juice for sale | Comrie Apple Festival | Perthshire Food and Drink
Photo credit: Blue Noun
Dispalys | Comrie Apple Festival | Perthshire Food and Drink
Photo credit: Blue Noun
A Successful Community Garden
Scottish Cultural Food Festival
Apple Day is a harvest festival.
The local community are invited to taste and buy many of the apple varieties grown (there are 40 varieties on-site) and to enjoy the delicious fresh apple juice being squeezed before you.
(Or if you are under 5, go toffee-apple-bonkers).
It’s the sort of event that took place across the whole of the UK 60+ years ago, but changing food culture, shopping habits and lifestyles have all but erased traditions like this one.
(NB: The churches calendar still celebrates Harvest Festivals).
There is growing recognition that actually seeing the source of your food builds respect, both for food and the natural environment.
Across Scotland and the UK, communities are banding together to rebuild lost orchards, community ‘greens’ and communal food larders.
Comrie has a particularly good spirit of community activism for the environment and for community projects.
Cultybraggan, the site of the community orchard itself is a repurposed WW2 POW camp that now sees new life as a micro-enterprise hub.
Apples for sale | Comrie Apple Festival
Photo credit: Blue Noun
“Across Scotland and the UK, communities are banding together to rebuild lost orchards, community ‘greens’ and communal food larders.”
Ruth, 2019
How the Orchard is Managed
How do you like them apples? Comrie Apple Festival | Perthshire Food and Drink
Photo credit: Blue Noun
Meet the Makers English Immersion
It’s no wonder Perthshire is known as the Larder of Scotland!
Woodcraft activity for the children with the Strathearn Snapper (Lynn McGregor) in the foreground
Photo credit: Blue Noun
Wild Hearth Bakery | Perthshire Food and Drink
Photo credit: Blue Noun
Jenny from Perthshire Honey gave us a demo of a hive | Perthshire Food and Drink
Photo credit: Blue Noun
Find out more about Comrie Community Orchard here.
Also:
Visiting Perth in Scotland? Find more about local food and drink here.
If you have enjoyed visiting Comrie Apple Festival with us, you might also like to read about when Tomnah’a gave Blue Noun a lesson in making a seasonal wreath:
Meet the Makers Immersion English | Autumn Wreath Making
A quick note from the author
We began the Blue Noun blog back in 2019, when we called ourselves a ‘language school’ (we now call ourselves a language hub) and we were building up our business completely from scratch.
Our first few months were spent making friends in the community, researching homestay hosts for our language guests and finding out about all the good local places and activities to take our language learning guests.
In 2021 we moved the Blue Noun website to a different platform. We had the option of deleting these old blogs – they are very different form our current, more pedagogic style of posting, but I think they are quite charming to see how our young business grew, turning from a language school run by an artist – into a language hub which really began to focus on coaching artists in English by immersing them in creative environments.