Apple festival set to be a hit after perfect growing season
Posted September 30, 2017 2:59 pm.
Last Updated September 30, 2017 3:01 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It should be a good year for apples in our province, thanks in large part to that hot and dry summer we had and you’ll be able to get a first-hand taste that harvest at the annual UBC Apple Festival.
The 26th annual UBC Apple Festival is only a couple of weeks away, and the festival’s apple buyer Margaret Butcher says it’s been a perfect growing season in the Okanagan.
“It’s very exciting for us. Inspite of the bad spring, when the apples actually bloomed, the bees were out and it was a nice hot summer. The fruit has a really strong presence of sugar in most of the fruits.”
They were actually helped by the wet spring.
“Some varieties are off, we have less of them than other years because that’s cyclical. But we’ve got lots of fruit coming and lots of variety.”
And she says there will be plenty of them.
“In eight hours, we move about 35,000 or 36,000 pounds of apples.”
There will be lots to choose from at the festival, which runs October 14th and 15th at the UBC Botanical Gardens but only for four hours per day.
“Right from Salmon Arm right down through the Okanagan, down to Cawston (B.C.) and then in the Fraser Valley, we’re getting about 60 to 63 varieties.”
