The 8^th Annual Salt Spring Island Apple Festival 2006 Highlights

Celebrating the Diversity of Apples

Sunday, Oct 1, 2006

We have a very unique, diverse, exciting organic Apple Festival.  The 800 or so happy people who attended in 2006 are our best advertising.  They were delighted.  They all became Salt Spring Island apple connoisseurs.

So the following are Apple Festival highlights from 2006:

• The apple display at Fulford Hall was composed of 2 sections

1) the Diversity of Apples display showing about 185 apple varieties in 18 categories.  The display of SIZE category shown below has the huge Biegtenheimer on the left and the tiny Whitney crab on the right.

2) the 2006 Salt Spring Island Apple display featured 296 apple varieties all grown organically on Salt Spring. This labeled display is arranged alphabetically.  The 2005 display only had 264 varieties.

• The combined display is shown in this view from the balcony of Fulford Hall.  In the foreground is the Display of Diversity, mentioned above, while the Salt Spring display is on the tables heading to the back of the hall.

• Tasting of 125 apple varieties at just one farm (Apple Luscious Organic Orchard). All ages tend to love this activity.  This is the place to discover your own personal favourites.  Other farms have their varieties for tasting.

• We sold the apple collection at Fulford (294 varieties) for a total of $660.  This year the money was split evenly 3 ways between the main contributors, Charlie Eagle (Bright Farm), Bob Weeden (Whims Farm)  and Harry Burton (Apple Luscious Organic Orchard) equaling $220 each.   The main purpose of this payback is to reward those who put all the work in to amassing this fabulous collection.  It helps them to hear how much we value their work and that we want to keep this display happening next year.  Hopefully in 2007, we can get over 300 varieties in the collection.
• The Salt Spring Pie Ladies sold 70 pies using 12 varieties of apples, All pies were labeled with the variety used, to demonstrate how different varieties taste when cooked up.
• It is our objective to get young people involved with apples.  We also try to get the community involved.  To that end, we get families to come out to Fulford Hall the night before the Apple Festival to help set up the hall.   The biggest job is to set up the apple collection.   This task is enormous, and involves making a display of all the boxes of labeled apple varieties collected from all parts of the island.  These varieties are in paper bags, with variety name on the outside.  Then volunteers arrange them alphabetically on 12 eight foot tables, set them up in an orderly fashion and then adding labels.   The display will take your breath away when you see it.   WOW.   Isn’t Mother Nature amazing.  Salt Springers love their apples. Below is a group of the younger volunteers hamming it up.

• This year local actors put on some fabulous reenactments, about 10:30 AM at Fulford Hall.  The audience was delighted.  Performances including the following
  • Captain Apple who was the MC
  • Johnny Appleseed, who gave a rousing, historically correct talk about his life spreading apple seed around eastern United States.
  • Maud Bridgman, (1868-1943) who painted on Salt Spring in the 1920’s, had a beautiful display of about 20 watercolours. This display was probably the largest exhibition of her work since her death.  She was portrayed by Briony Penn, her great grand daughter.
  • “The Queen”  who gave a short speech and then knight-eed Maud Bridgman.

• The Apple Festival is pleased to direct most profits towards a fruit processing facility on Salt Spring.   But it is also proud to direct money to other ventures which we label  POSITIVE SPINOFFS.  This year we directed $500 towards the art of Maud Bridgman (via Briony Penn shown above).  This money covered the cost of making limited edition prints in both paper and canvas of her painting View Towards Russel Island. It was painted in 1921 and is 10 by 14 inches.  It was chosen as it showed the location of the first apple trees Theodore Trege planted on Salt Spring after 1860.  Paper prints sold for $100 while canvas prints sold for $125.  The Bridgman family decided to redirect all profits to the Seeds for Malawi project run locally by Susan Evans.  This project educates young people in Malawi and tries to foster local sustainability.  Note that for $100, the costs of one print, a young girl in Malawi can be educated for one year.   I think Maud would have been smiling for all the following reasons
  • her first exhibition and the great response it got,
  • her first limited edition 85 years after it was painted and
  • her ability to help young girls in Malawi almost 62 years after her death.
    – Now that is a great example of apples combined with art, reaching through time to help people half way around the world.

 View Towards Russel Island – 1921

• This watercolour shows the ocean just off the Bridgman property, looking southwest towards Russell Island and in the distance, Vancouver Island.  This is at the bottom of Bridgman Road in the south of Salt Spring.  It shows a few of the old Trage apple trees planted after 1860 growing on the foreshore.  Harry Burton (250-653-2007) is the contact person for prints or at Apple Festival 2007.
• Can you imagine a 92 year old woman, with a walker, becoming as enthused as a teenager when she discovered Apple Luscious had the old Gravenstein apples she had known as a kid.   She climbed up the 2 stairs to our selling area on her own.  WOW.  Her words were, “You have made my day”.
• Naidine Sims, one of the oldest descendants of black Salt Springer pioneers, with the help of family and friends gave a great presentation of black history on Salt Spring dating back to some of the first settlers about1860.  This presentation only happens once at 3 PM at the home of her great grandmother, Sylvia Stark.
• Ann Aylard and Michael Cowan of the BCFTA did a great job at apple ID.
• Rex Welland and Margiet Dogterom, our local leading edge experts in the field of pollination by orchard bees, helped many people optimized fruit crops.

Apple Festival Proceeds for 2006 – POSITIVE SPINOFFS

1. Seeds for Malawi Project via Susan Evans –  $500 to cover the education of 5 your girls in Malawi for one year.
2. ursary of $500 towards agriculture education:  Catlin Hilyer from GISS, given in May 2007, going into a science program.
3. $500 towards the art of Maud Bridgman.  This money covered the cost of making limited edition prints in both paper and canvas of her painting View Towards Russel Island, which benefited Seeds for Malawi.
4. Thank a Salt Springer- about $300 to various individuals on Salt Spring to thank them in various ways for helping make this a great island.
   1. Leslie Wallace ($100 cash) for work finding alternatives for the Gypsy Moth Spray Program (via Margaret O’Hara and John Rowlandson)
   2. Herb Burnet ($100 cash towards a new computer) for work in volunteering with substance abuse programs and youth golf  (via Harry Burton)
   3. Harry Burton ($100 cash towards supplies for video taping of pioneers on Salt Spring Island (via Herb Burnet)
5. Fulford Community Nature School Society- Summer Art Camp and Summer Sport Camp for youth – $200 on June 1, 2007 to sponsor 2 students for one week each.
6. Remainder towards a fruit processing facility on SSI.

Leading up to the 2007 Apple Festival – Sunday Sept 30, 2007

1. Tourism British Columbia has included the Salt Spring Apple Festival in it’s publication of the top 10 summer food and wine-related festivals in British Columbia.   WOW.  I am delighted.  The momentum is building.
2. UP Magazine, the inflight magazine of West Jet, is including 3 photos from Apple Festival 2006 in their next issue.
3. Gardenwise featured a 4 page article in their fall issue about the Salt Spring Island Apple Festival.   Christina Symons was here for the 2005 festival, loved it and wrote an article that did not get put in the 2006 ediition, so here it comes in 2007.
4. Harrowsmith in their Oct 2007 issue, presented some organic apple growing methods I have collated from myself and other growers on Salt Spring to show how we grow our great tasting apples.

See you on Sunday, Sept 30 at the Salt Spring Island Apple Festival.