Here's a St Chris tradition for you. Apple Day.
What's Apple Day, we hear you ask? Apple Day is our yearly harvest of our apple crop here at St Chris.
With the harvest, we make bottles and bottles of apple juice using special equipment. Lydia Somerville, the Junior School Forest School teacher, leads the operation and invites classes from across the Nursery (Monte) to Year 6 (D Group) to try their hand at washing, churning, pressing and bottling the apples into yummy juice.
This year was no exception. It was all hands to the pump (quite literally) for Apple Day this week as we were blessed with a very abundent harvest. The harvest was so big that we had not one but two Apple Days and not enough bottles to collect all the juice!
From the smallest hands in the Monte (Nursery) to our supporting Sixth Form team, each bottle of juice was lovingly made and decorated with a handmade label. Monte (Nursery) children enjoyed shouting "click, clack!" as the handle from the press went back and forth and back and forth and the wooden blocks further and further down into the press.
Despite the arduous process of making the juice (a routine that requires washing the apples, then grinding them down into small chunks and juicing the mulch), the product was absolutely a labour of love - sweet, tangy apple juice for everyone to enjoy. One student remarked "the crop this year is a lot sweeter", while, for other students, this is their very first time experiencing Apple Day.
We're excited to share some pictures from the day, which you can find on our gallery here.