Heirloom Apple Festival
Heirloom Apple Festival -- over 200 different kinds to taste!
Sunday October 28 from 11-4
At the Venersborg One-Room Schoolhouse
24309 NE 209th St.
Battle Ground, WA 98604
Every fall we host an Heirloom Apple Tasting with 200+ different and unusual varieties to sample and
nearly all of them are delicious. Some apples taste like honey, bananas, strawberries while
some of the tart ones pucker up your mouth like you just sucked on a lemon, but these are
the ones that make great cider. Other apples smell like roses and pineapples. Some are
long and narrow, some have red flesh and purple skin, others are white as snow. Some are breeds from
the 1600s and a few have been around longer than that even. Admission lets you sample as many
as you'd like. Just point and we'll give you a taste of each of them. Come hungry!
Cast your vote for best flavor, prettiest, most unusual shape, tartest, sweetest, best
scent and strangest flavor. We've got them all.
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| Winter Red Flesh Apples |
If you have old apples trees growing in your backyard we'll do our best to identify them.
Recently we found an old variety on our farm, the Gideon Sweet, that was thought to be extinct!
Our little village of Venersborg and the surrounding area were old fruit-growing communities.
Apple trees can grow for 80-100 years so the old varieties planted in our early days are
coming up on the end of their time. If these trees are identified and branches from the old
trees grafted onto new tree stock, these varieties will continue. We'd like to encourage
people who have (or know of) an old apple tree to bring a few apples in so we can look at them.
At last year's apple event about a half dozen apple varieties were identified that were
pretty rare. Once an old breed dies, it's gone forever. Let's not let that happen.
If you'd like your apples identified
Bring 5 from each tree in a separate paper bag
labeled with your name, phone number and the location of the tree. Don't
wash or polish them because some of the characteristics are in the skin's bloom. Our apple
ID crew is from the Home Orchard Society and you can even join HOS while you're here.
We all get excited about finding forgotten breeds. Great folks!
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| Lots of Heirloom apples |
What can you do at the Apple Fest?
Taste more than 200 different apples
Get your apple trees identified so you know what they are
Watch cider pressed the old fashioned way
Eat homebaked apple delights (gluten-free), chili and hot cider
Enter your name in the raffle for the beautiful handmade quilt.
Watch apple pie demos by local pie-making experts and learn their secrets
Make an apple pie to bake at home!
Self guided tours of the old school all day
Admission is $5, kids under 16 are free. Apple tasting, tree identification, pie making demo
and school tours are all included in admission.
Held at the historic Venersborg one-room schoolhouse at the corner of 209th St and 242nd Ave
in Venersborg, ten minutes east of Hockinson opposite the Venersborg General Store.
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