Busy, busy day

Today will be a flurry of activity for the Riverton crew. We are making preparations for the weekend's harvest festival and there is much to do. First up this morning is a trip to the school to collect the vegetable models. Last year, there were dozens of potato dinosaurs, carrot cars and horses made from marrows waiting for me when I arrived to transport them back to the 'harvest hall' - this year I expect there'll be as many if not more. Kids like making things out of vegetables and their creativity knows no bounds. Then I'll be gathering up produce from all over: strings of shallots, trays of garlic, sacks of corn, bins of pumpkins - anything and everything that says 'autumn harvest'. We've apples galore, all sorted into their varieties and ready to be displayed and tasted, the cider presses to be lugged down to the hall and set up ready for pressing - all manner of things to move about. I'll be making an extra large plate of oatmeal and stewed peasegood this morning! Our 'Harvets Festival' t-shirts arrived last night and they're looking great - we'll be colourful walking advertisements for the festival where ever we go. The Times didn't do themselves proud at all this year by advertising us the way they did last year so we'll have to wait and see how our visitor numbers look but at this late stage we don't care at all and have friends from all over coming to take part in the workshops, the Saturday night feast and the general weekend of standing around talking and eating, sampling ciders and pressing apples, catching up with each other and having a go at learning something new.
If you are in the vicinity, come along too. The festival is at the Aparima college hall, Riverton, Saturday and Sunday, 10:00am to 4:oo pm both days.
I'll be up-dating here as  events unfold, for the record, and posting photos of the best vegetables and so on.