By Ant. English apples are now in season but none are on the supermarket shelves. How long will it be before they are? How many varieties will we see, will they all be the same size and will they be fresh? Where do we find a really good fresh apple?

Fresh English apples, fantastic food! One a day to keep the doctor away! Instant energy!

We have over one thousand varieties of apple in the UK but only 15 are grown commercially. Most, like the delicious Cox’s Orange Pippin, have been de-listed by supermarkets and as a result most of the trees have been destroyed by growers.

Different varieties of apple are ripening on their trees between now and October. Bramley and Discovery are now in season and should be available to us all. Most fruit and veg is most nutritious and tasty when it is fresh and ripe. Far too much of what we eat has been picked early to satisfy the needs of distribution and shelf life. To get the best buy direct.

And that’s what BigBarn is all about. Raising awareness to good food and helping you find it, or, encouraging you to ask your local farmer to grow it.

To find your nearest fresh apple try our new ‘product search’ here or under the ‘BigBarn search box’ simply type in ‘apple’, your postcode and the area you want to search. As long as your local producers have told us what they grow the search will display on the map the nearest, ‘definite’ stockists of apples or you can click of ‘Maybies’ to find a stockist who may have apples. We also list Farmers Markets as most products like apples should be found at your local Farmers Market. If you see any errors or omission please let us know and please encourage your local producers / farm shop to plant some apple trees. Or better still plant one yourself.

And don’t forget to register here if you haven’t already, for our newsletter so we can keep you posted on local foody information. We hope this newsletter will help build ‘food communities’ so that your local ‘Mrs Miggins’ can include a message telling locals to come and pick her apples rather than let them fall and rot.