{"id":1243,"date":"2010-11-04T14:07:27","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T13:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1243"},"modified":"2010-11-05T13:07:46","modified_gmt":"2010-11-05T12:07:46","slug":"apple-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1243","title":{"rendered":"Apple Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s a perfect recipe for a communal village activity:<\/strong>\u00a0 bring your ripe and surplus apples to the green, have them pulped and pressed to juice, play various arcane games with apples (\u2018apple bowls\u2019 \u2013 quite a few inswingers – , an \u2018apple-shy\u2019 with prizes if you can knock them off their perch), eat local pork with apple sauce.\u00a0 And of course drink copious quantities of \u00a0the actual juice, which constantly changes flavour during the day as different types of apple are added to the mix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In this small Oxfordshire village by the Chilterns, almost every garden has an apple tree and few can be bothered to store the fruit over winter in newspaper and sheds, let alone juice them, so much would just rot on the bough.\u00a0\u00a0 The big communal apple press on the green is satisfying in its simplicity, with layers of pulp in crates, separated by sheets of coarse muslin and with a long lever that everyone from kids to adults can take turns in wheeling around to extract the frothing liquid.<\/p>\n

Roger Deakin<\/strong> would have loved it.\u00a0 The Common Ground <\/a>group he helped found were some of the first to celebrate the variety of the English apple, so that we did not succumb to a Golden Delicious monoculture (what Roger called \u2018Tesco\u2019s Delight\u2019).\u00a0 He died four years ago, just after completing his wonderful Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees<\/a>,<\/em> and is much missed by his friends.\u00a0 I wrote this in his memory:<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Roger Deakin
\n(1943 – 2006)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The dark red windfalls from our apple tree<\/span><\/p>\n

reproach me silently;\u00a0 I never knew<\/span><\/p>\n

their name or provenance until you died<\/span><\/p>\n

so suddenly;\u00a0 or cared about the orchard<\/span><\/p>\n

with its Russets, Bramleys, old Charles Ross,<\/span><\/p>\n

the quince tree pregnant with unwanted fruit,<\/span><\/p>\n

a mulberry staining the cut-grass red;\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0.<\/p>\n

and now you\u2019re dead;\u00a0 and there\u2019s no chance<\/span><\/p>\n

to walk your coppiced woods again, or hear<\/span><\/p>\n

that rich, smoked voice describing how<\/span><\/p>\n

the railway shed has fresh clean linen<\/span><\/p>\n

always waiting for you on its bed<\/span><\/p>\n

in a bower of alder and ash.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roger, I eat this apple for you:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Devonshire Quarrendon Red.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a perfect recipe for a communal village activity:\u00a0 bring your ripe and surplus apples to the green, have them pulped and pressed to juice, play various arcane games with apples (\u2018apple bowls\u2019 \u2013 quite a few inswingers – , an \u2018apple-shy\u2019 with prizes if you can knock them off their perch), eat local pork […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,5,1],"tags":[75,74],"class_list":["post-1243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-festivals","category-uncategorized","tag-apples","tag-roger-deakin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1243"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}