1st Apple Harvest Food Festival
Visitors piled in to shop with local food producers who brought not only delicious locally produced foods, but recipes, ideas and samples for everyone to take home. Families came with children who were helped by local couple Peter Watkins and Iona Tasker to create fantastic apple witches from shrunken apples and recycled materials. The kids also delighted in making their mark on the giant community tree print created with the help of The Printmakers' Boutique and in making springy apples with the help of 'The Children's Orchard' project. The village's very own Lucy Russell and Jen Monaghan helped TWK's Fiona with the face painting which had a steady queue for almost 4 hours!
Sainsbury's and Morrison's supermarkets are due thanks for their kind donations of UK apple varieties to use in our apple press, as is local resident Mrs Blair, who brought us baskets of her delicious crab apples, recipes and samples of her wonderful crab apple jelly. Transition WK's steering group did some mighty fine work manning the apple cruncher and press and chopping hundreds of apples. Thanks to Rob, Hilary, Ruth and stalwart TWK volunteer Jessie. Huge thanks to John Caldwell of Black Pepper Studios who took time of his busy schedule to come along and film some of the event for us.
Savvy villagers signed up for their free fruit trees, energy checks and power down switches. Questions were answered and advice given about renewable energy, composting and growing your own food. Don't worry if you missed it, remember the eco centre is open week days, you can pop in any time for a chat.
The Wee Deli put on a great cafe and Climie's Butcher brought a table of their delicious pre-packed meats. Chu Chu's were on hand to cook up and give out delicious pancakes and apple syrup for everyone. Local bee keeper Mr Lennox and his wife were selling their delicious West Kilbride honey and we also had, V-Cuisine (Morrocan Spiced Lentil Soup is fabulous), The Ayrshire Food network, Lime Tree Larders products, Fins, Petrie Fine Foods, Fair-trade Fairlie, RJ Love Larder Products, Margaret Brogan Potted Herbs and Sarah Clark cupcakes.
Local producers and people came together to make this event a huge success and we're already looking forward to the next one.