In brief: Jersey Heritage’s annual cider festival, La Faîs’sie d’Cidre, will go ahead this weekend after islanders donated around 40 bags of apples to make up for a catastrophic harvest. Poor weather and heatwaves left the Hamptonne orchard with a fraction of its usual crop, but community generosity has saved the day, just about.
A Festival Rescued by Neighbourly Generosity
There are moments that remind you why island life has its charms, and this is one of them. Jersey Heritage put out an appeal for apples, and Jersey answered. The BBC reports that around 40 bags of various apple varieties were donated by islanders, ranging from those with a single tree in their back garden to those with a small orchard, providing just enough fruit to keep La Faîs’sie d’Cidre alive for another year.
The festival, held at Hamptonne Country Life Museum on 17 and 18 October, is one of the island’s most cherished traditional events. It recreates the old art of cider-making using a horse-powered stone crusher and a wooden press, the kind of scene that connects modern Jersey to its agricultural roots in a way no heritage leaflet ever quite manages.
The Scale of the Harvest Disaster
To understand why those 40 bags matter so much, consider what Jersey Heritage was working with before the appeal. Nicola Lucas, Jersey Heritage’s community events curator, told the BBC that the orchard normally produces around 80 large sacks of fruit. This year, she said, they would “be lucky to fill two sacks,” and even the apples that had been harvested were “not offering much juice.” Poor weather and heatwaves were blamed for the severe shortfall.
The donated apples amount to roughly a quarter of what the festival would ordinarily use. Lucas was candid about what that means in practice: there will not be as much fresh apple juice from the press for younger visitors to sample this year. However, the horse-powered crusher and wooden press will still be demonstrated, which is, let’s be honest, the spectacle most people come to see.
Planning Ahead: Saving Cider for 2027
Jersey Heritage has also had to think creatively about next year. Lucas explained that while visitors will be able to taste last year’s cider at the festival, some of that stock will be held back deliberately. “Some of it will be held back for 2027 to ensure that tastings can go ahead at next year’s cider festival in the absence of a vintage from this year,” she said. It is, in its own quiet way, a rather elegant piece of forward planning: rationing yesterday’s harvest to protect tomorrow’s tradition.
The situation is a reminder of how dependent heritage events rooted in agriculture remain on the unpredictability of the natural world. No amount of careful organisation can conjure apples from trees that have had a miserable season.
Source: BBC News
