Wenvoe Community Wassailing

Wenvoe Wildlife Group

Wenvoe Community Wassailing

Mike Tucker has been out and about trimming and laying the hedgerows planted by the Wildlife Group and the Scouts. Another ancient tradition that we have managed to re-establish in the village.

Mike has also been crafting and installing rustic props to help secure those fruit trees that have started to lean, often as a result of the considerable weight a good crop of fruit can add to a tree. Unsecured trees can eventually collapse but you can see in many old orchards trees that have been propped up and carry on happily growing and producing fruit for many years. Thank you, Mike.

Wenvoe Community Wassailing

We were delighted to be joined by 24 Wassailers on a gloriously sunny January morning. We blessed apple trees in the community orchard and also outside the Church Hall, proceeding to the Community Centre for hot spicy apple juice, tasty apple cakes and a lovely tale from our Wassailer in chief, Cath Little.

Big thanks to:

  • Wenvoe Community Centre, for hosting us
  • Llanbethian Orchards, for the donation of cider
  • Volunteers Sue Hoddell (for the cakes!), Sian and Steve Cumner Jones and Annie Bennett, all for making the event run smoothly.
  • Cath Little, a lovely and talented storyteller.
  • Special thanks to Claire Bottomley for getting the whole show on the road. Claire continues the story here and includes photographs which capture aspects of the day.

We look forward to Wassailing again next year!

A big thank you to everyone who supported and took part in the village Wassail (blessing of apple trees), hosted by Wenvoe Wildlife Group. We picked an auspicious date, as 17 January is Twelfth Night in the old Julian calendar, the traditional date for Wassailing.

We gathered on a beautiful, dry and sunny morning, starting with a Wassail blessing to the small apple tree outside the Church Hall. A group of 24 Wassailers continued on to the Community Orchard, where we blessed the apple trees with cider (kindly donated by Llanbethian Orchards) and toast, raising a hullabaloo banging pans, singing and chiming bells. Here’s to a bumper crop later this year!

The Wassail was led by storyteller, Cath Little, with additional Wassailing songs from Blanche Rowen, and we lingered a while in the sunny orchard before heading to the Community Centre for spiced apple juice, apple cakes made from apples harvested in the orchards last year, closing with a traditional tale about an apple tree from Cath Little.

This was our first Wassail in the village (at least for many years), and hopefully there will be another one next year, possibly incorporating Mari Lwyd.

Thank you everyone,

Claire.