EYNSHAM’S history of apple growing was celebrated at an event to encourage people to grow and eat local produce.

GreenTEA (Transition Eynsham Area) held the Time to Eat Festival at St Leonard’s Church in High Street on Saturday.

It featured apple bobbing and games for children, recipes for adults and an opportunity to make fruit smoothies using a bicycle to power the blades.

People were also able to show off their produce they had created from pumpkin and tomato seeds GreenTEA handed out at an event in March.

Aidan Buckner, nine, said: “I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed trying to get the apples off the string and the apple bobbing. It was fun.”

His mum, Vanessa Gregory, 44, of Cassington, said: “The best thing for me was all the different recipes.

“People had tried different things with apples and pumpkins and had prepared dishes you could try and get the recipes for. It was good because it raises awareness of using local produce rather than just going to the supermarket.”

Sue Raikes, of GreenTEA, said: “It was a great day.

“Part of the point was that Eynsham is traditionally an apple growing area and although there are Eynsham apple varieties they have largely gone out of favour.

“One of the things we were trying to do was make people interested in bringing back those varieties.”

She added: “We are going to need to be more sustainable in the way we eat because importing fruit and veg from across the globe is not very good in terms of producing carbon.”

GreenTea is also planting fruit trees on footpath and road sides throughout Eynsham to try and turn the village into an orchard.