Many thanks to all who visited or took part in this special event run in partnership with the Ledbury Poetry Festival. The weather cleared, the displays on the food stalls were fabulous, and once the music and poetry started so the beer, cider, perry and Derek’s special elderflower and lemon liqueur Proseccos started to be appreciated.
Many thanks especially to our stallholders who worked a long day to make this all possible for us to enjoy. It was a true celebration of our local food and drink blended with good music and poetry.
Please let us know what you thought of the day and ways in which we could make a future event even better by email to ask@ledburyfoodgroup.org or via our Twitter feed. More photos appear at the end of this article.
Some thoughts on cherries and plums.
Chrissie Bentley asked for poetic contributions on cherries and plums. Here are some of them together with some more authentic ones:
Stalks
Two cherries on the cherry-tree hung there quite enchantingly
And anyone who looked could see that cherries would blush so easily
When tickled pink to think of pies and twinkles in each other’s eyes.
Two cherries on a cherry tree tasted very good to me.
John Edward Smallshaw
Cherry Ripe
Cherry-ripe, ripe, I cry
Full and fair ones; come and buy
If so be you ask me where they do grow, I answer, There
Where my Julia’s lips do smile;
There’s the land or cherry-isle, whose plantations fully show
All the years where cherries grow
Robert Herrick
Cherries
Handed to me in soft paper sack,
I transferred them
straight to a bowl.
Life can be a paper sack
of cherries,
but why live in Solihull
when you can live in Barbados?
They were EXQUISITE.
I ate them as quickly as I could
without taking in too much air,
squeezing the stones finger and thumb
over the vicarage wall.
I felt life
coursing through me
several hours later.
Poetforhire.net
Some thoughts on plums…
…my head looks like a mouldy plum
I think that’s why I look so glum
I am going to sit on my bum
And eat a plum
My love is like a plum
- Plump
- Lustrous
- Unusual
- Moist
Eat them slowly and enjoy their goodness
While the summer warmth lives in my heart
Cherries are red,
Plums are blue
That makes purple
Just like you!!!
Life is what you make it…
Plum pie is how you bake it.
Ode to Herman the Plum
Intense, round, plum coloured, ball of plumpness…with a stone
This is just to say…
I have eaten the plums that were in the ice-box
and which you were probably saving for breakfast
Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold
William Carlos Williams
This is just to say
I have eaten the plums that were in the ice-box
then wrote a poem that was anthologised and read by millions
You were so understanding in the divorce court so sweet and cold
Barry Lane
