Students, staff and the local community are all welcome to come and enjoy the edible campus and celebrate the harvest season. This year’s festival is centred using jars to store food.
No booking is required*,all activities are free and all are welcome. Children under the age of 16 should be accompanied by an adult.
* except for A Jar of Memory Pickles (see details below).
There will be apple collection points on campus from the week commencing 9 October for people to help themselves to fruit that has been harvested. The collection points will be:
- Holywell Gym
- EHB
- The Public Workbench sculpture (near the Library and Student Village)
- The Library
- Bom Bom (Derwent Drive)
The event programme is as follows:
Friday 13 October, 3pm-7.30pm
Apple pressing, 3pm-6pm, Prairie Garden
This is a drop-in activity with Transition Loughborough press. Help press juice or bring your own apples and containers to make fresh juice or cider.
A Jar of Memory pickles, 3pm-5pm, International House
Guest artist, Janhavi Sharma, will be leading us in exploring the idea of memories captured in the making and eating of pickles and preserves. All participants are encouraged to bring with them a clean empty glass jar with a lid. Places at this event are limited so please register your interest in advance by emailing Environment@lboro.ac.uk.
Fruit Routes Twilight Walk with Mita Solanky, 5pm-6.30pm, Barefoot Orchard
A processional walk around Fruit Routes with lantern jars. Hot drinks will be served from 6pm-6.30pm.
Night Jar Ensemble, 6.30pm-7.30pm, Barefoot Orchard
A fireside gathering with music from the Students’ Union’s Classical Ensemble. Chairs and blankets will be provided.
Saturday 14 October, 11am-7.30pm
Apple pressing, 11am-4pm, Prairie Garden
Jarvest Bake-off, drop off from 11am-2pm, Judging at 2pm, Prizegiving at 3pm LAGS Garden
11am Bake-Off entries: Enter our annual bake-off by making something savoury or sweet (including preserves) with locally-grown produce. Prizes for children and adults. Free to enter.
3pm winners announced: Tea and bakes served until 4pm.
Harvest produce swap, 11am-2pm, LAGS Garden
Bring your home and locally grown fruit and veg to swap, raw or transformed into something delicious in a jar. Recipe ideas are also welcome!
Summer in a Jar, 11am-1pm, LAGS Garden
Live cooking demos, run by Loughborough’s Landscape and Gardening Society (LAGS), will give you the opportunity to make your own dried herbs, foraged james and jellies and spicy pickling. Participants are encouraged to bring their own clean jar with a lid.
Jam jar lantern making with Mita Solanky, 11am-1pm, Walled Garden
Create your own oil-lamp vigil in a jam jar, decorated using foraged autumn leaves, berries and seeds. This is a self-led activity inspired by the artist’s childhood memories of an oil-lamp that would burn throughout the day outside their pantry of rice, grains and preserved foods. This vigil was an offering of gratitude for the bounty and abundance that the natural world provides but also a marker of using this abundance with care. The slow burn symbolises how our consumption should also burn slowly. We encourage all participants to bring with them a clean empty glass jar with a lid.
Jarvest bells with Mita Solanky, 1pm-4pm, Walled Garden
Create your own ankle bells for dancing, which can be used at our workshop with Bare Bones Border Morris Dancers later in the afternoon.
Barebones Jarvest dancing, 4pm-5pm
Barebones Border Morris group dance performance, workshop and participatory dance session.
Fruit Routes Twilight Walk, 5pm-6.30pm
Night Jar Ensemble, 6.30pm-7.30pm
More information on Fruit Routes.
Accessibility
Events in Barefoot Orchard take place on level ground with some on-site seating provided. The Twilight Walk is not always on structured paths but is mostly flat with alternative routes for sloping areas.
The path between the Walled Garden and Prairie Garden includes steps but an alternative route will be available.