Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Yesterday was a beautiful morning at Treeton.  Mat, Ian and I felt privelidged to be out early enjoying gathering some wild apples.  We are storing these to use for a free juice bar at Whirlowhall Farms annual Farm Fayre on the 19th September.

We always love visiting Whirlowhall Farm.  It feels as if we have gone on holiday, journeying from the hurly burly of Sheffield’s centre to the bucolic delights just up the road at Whirlow.

This year the Farm Fayre should be better than ever with free childrens' activities. Click here to see the days event.

Yesterdays foray with  the low sun, the first leaves just turning and ripe blackberries around every corner must have stirred something in my memory – at least the first line of Keat’s poem so I reproduce the whole verse below.  Make the most of your foraging opportunities folks whilst stocks last!

From John Keats’ poem, To Autumn, 1820:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.