It’s time to get ready for the 2024 Salt Spring Island Apple Festival, with its theme of “Celebrating the Amazing Apples of Salt Spring Island.”
Salt Spring Island has a long and rich agricultural tradition — with the first farming activities taking place in 1859 — and it was once British Columbia’s prime apple-growing area.
“Commercial orchards were the first agricultural specialty on the island,” writes Charles Kahn in his Salt Spring – The Story of an Island book. “In the 1880s or early 1890s, farmers planted large orchards, which were in full production by 1900. By the end of the century, fruit growing was big business. In 1894, B.C.’s agriculture department reported 13,739 apple trees, 1,689 plum trees, 1,161 pear trees, 474 cherry trees, and 279 other fruit trees on Salt Spring.”
While Gulf Islands dominance in fruit production gave way to the Okanagan in the 1920s, for a variety of reasons that included easier transportation to markets, the islands have experienced a resurgence in fruit-growing and processing activities in recent decades, along with more agricultural activity in general as the importance of food security is heightened.
Salt Spring Apple Festival Details:
Sunday, Sept. 29, from 9 am to 5 pm
Tickets are available outside the Ganges Visitor Info Centre and at Fulford Hall. Cost is $10 for adults, $5 for students and little kids free. No advance ticket sales.
Ticket purchase includes a map for a self-guided tour of about 15 farms, orchards and food/drink producing locations, and entrance to Fulford Community Hall, where a huge display of apples grown on Salt Spring Island is set up (for viewing only). Last year, 489 different varieties were assembled in alphabetical order.
The hall is also where the Pie Ladies of the Salt Spring Island Women’s Institute will be selling apple pies (whole or in slices), with the variety of apple identified. The South End Sausage team will have their BBQ set up outside as well. Festival posters and other items will be for sale, and an apple cider expert will be among the guests.
One special spot included on the tour is the Bloom Castle by the Sea orchard and broader landscaped property (but not the building itself), now owned by Royal Roads University as a gift from late property owner Susan Bagley Bloom.
Two cideries and a new distillery, plus a food hub with South End Sausage, Francis Bread and Woodshed Provisions are also participating this year.
The first festival was held in October of 1999, spearheaded by Harry Burton of Apple Lucious Organic Orchard, with just a couple of years missed since then. Burton has also been known as Captain Apple (when he dons his “unique” costume) and his orchard is still on the tour.
