WASSAIL!

SATURDAY 17TH JANUARY 2pm till dusk…

Every January, we celebrate the apple & other fruit trees of Windsor Street and Princes Park by singing round the fire, making a racket with pots and pans to wake up the land, sharing messages & poems of hope for a good blossom & growing season, and welcoming the new annual apple guardians, which involves eating cake & sipping hot mulled apple punch.

This year, together with the Friends of Princes Park* and Hope Street Harmonies Choir, we invite you to join our Wassail Trail, from the Grapes Community Garden, journeying up Windsor Street ending up at the mini orchard in Princes Park, wassailing fruit trees along the way. We’ll sing and dance for the Windsor St community fruit trees, the crab apples of Windsor St School, the mighty Devonshire Rd quince tree and the apples & pear trees in the park! If you have a fruit tree you’d like us to wassail nearby, let us know!

ROUGH TIMINGS – WALKING & WASSAILING AS WE GO:

  • 2PM MEET AT GRAPES COMMUNITY FOOD GARDEN FOR FIRE, SONG, PAN-BASHING & MORE
  • 3PM WASSAILING AT SQUASH + APPLE CAKE NEW GUARDIAN WELCOME
  • 3.30PM WASSAILING WINDSOR STREET
  • 4-5PM PRINCES PARK ORCHARD WASSAIL

Everyone is welcome! By donation/solidarity fundraiser for Soup-it-Forward.

BRING AN OLD POT AND A STICK/WOODEN OR METAL UTENSIL TO BASH!

BRING YOUR BELLS AND WHISTLES. BRING APPLES TO SHARE.

DRESS FOR THE WEATHER AND TO GLADDEN YOUR HEART!

At Squash our apple trees are our ‘more than human’ partners in our 100-year vision – which began with the planting of apples trees in The Grapes Community Food Garden in 2010.  If nurtured, an apple tree can live for up to 100 years. Our love of wassailing comes from a shared passion for ritual, being close to nature & community and feeling embodied in the seasons.

*The Friends of Princes Park are a group of local people who want to Princes Park thrive for people and nature. They are a volunteer led and run charitable organisation which works in partnership with the Liverpool City Council, organised by an elected FoPP Executive Committee. They do tree work including planting and coppicing, bulbs, shrub and wildflower planting and have planted over 4000 trees over the last 17 years, increasing the biodiversity and wildlife of the park. They organise other activities such as tree walks, wildlife walks and picnics. Volunteer sessions run in the park every other Sunday between 10:30 and 14:30 all year round. 

Wassailing, from the Anglo-Saxon phrase ‘waes hael’, which means ‘good health’, is a traditional, rousing ritual of fire, food, song and togetherness in nature in the winter depths, to celebrate the apple trees and to warm them up for the coming spring and to encourage a bountiful harvest. ‘Historic UK’ say There are two distinct variations of wassailing. One involves groups of merrymakers going from one house to another, wassail bowl in hand, singing traditional songs and generally spreading fun and good wishes. The other form of wassailing is generally practiced in the countryside, particularly in fruit growing regions, where it is the trees that are blessed. Wassailing (historic-uk.com) This year we’ll attempt a bit of both. We’ll be collecting for our ‘Soup-it-Forward’ initiative along the way.

Apple wassailing was traditionally celebrated by orchard & cider-making communities in the West Country, and in the Welsh border counties.  It happened on ‘Old twelfy night’ before the Gregorian calendar – which falls on 17th January.  Modern wassails happen all over the country throughout January.