Little Orchard Cider and Music Festival

Little Orchard Cider and Music Festival is a rock, folk and indie festival at Healeys Cyder Farm in Penhallow, near Truro, in Cornwall. The first edition ran in 2013. Quick Panda Productions put it on the Healeys cider farm. It is not the Big Apple Cyder Festival of that first September announcement. It is not a separate Rattler Fest. It is not a cider weekend in another county. It is the September weekend on the Penhallow farm.

In 2013 south-west press described a three-day meeting, 27 to 29 September, with house ciders and others from around the United Kingdom. Joe Healey, of the farm, talked about harvest and pressing in sight. Ben Hall, then with Live Music Connections, said they wanted a music festival that celebrated West Country cider. Mad Dog Mcrea and Black Friday were on that bill. There was a tractor through the orchard, cider samples and a field that was already a working farm, not an empty hired site.

Healeys Cyder Farm does not pretend to be a theme park. It is a working cider farm: apple trees, a cobbled courtyard, farm animals and the smell of apple when the press is running. You reach it on Cornish roads toward Penhallow, between Truro and the Perranporth coast. Campers sleep a few minutes from the stages. Day visitors go back to a village or a car. You walk the site. There is no lake and no stadium. There are orchards, tents and an apple wood where a silent disco runs at night.

The music is British bands that fit a farm, not a stadium tour. The Wurzels, from Somerset, have been the cider band on the bill: field folk and choruses the crowd already knows. In 2019 The Zutons, Reef, Skinny Lister and Mad Dog Mcrea again took stages. In 2021 Ash and Fun Lovin’ Criminals closed nights. In 2022 Feeder and Kula Shaker headlined the main stage. The BBC Introducing Stage has given space to Cornish acts. Rock, folk and indie work at that scale: close, cider in hand, no sand pit.

There was no edition in 2020. In 2021 Lou Martin, who organised and booked, said they were back in the field after a year off. Write-ups of that return remember a changed plan: the main marquee where the rides usually sat, camping closer to the music, queues at the bars and a sound clash between the waltzers and Club Fromage. They also remember Taunts on BBC Introducing and Ele Lucas pouring pints before running to the stage. The festival did not change county. It changed the layout and stayed on the same farm.

By day the site is a family field. There is a tractor, animals in the courtyard, Rattler Olympics — welly wanging, barrel pushing, apple bobbing — and a Sunday barn dance. Club Fromage plays floor songs that do not try to be obscure. Granny’s Wardrobe, or the Secret Wardrobe, hides in the wood and you enter through a wardrobe door. The silent disco under the branches works when the stages drop. At night the farm is louder. Anyone who only wants a headliner misses the rest of the field.

Getting there means a car or a long train to Truro and then a road. Camping and glamping sit on the farm itself. 2021 write-ups say sleeping close saved the walk. They also say strong cider shortens the night if you do not measure it. There is stall food and, in 2019, a Cyder Supper of small plates in the courtyard. The crowd mixes families, local people and anyone who comes for The Wurzels or a nineties bill. It is not a city festival. It is a Cornwall field with house cider.

There is no need to mix it with a Hereford or Somerset cider festival that uses the word orchard. Nor with the 2013 Big Apple name, which sounded like New York and was not. Healeys and Penhallow cut the confusion. Quick Panda Productions put it on that farm. The Wurzels, the orchard silent disco and Club Fromage explain it better than a slogan.

Little Orchard reads as the cider-and-rock festival of a Cornwall farm that began in 2013 and, after the blank year, came back to the same orchard. The Wurzels’ folk and the indie of Feeder or Kula Shaker sit in that sentence. So do the tractor, the grannies on sofas and cider poured where it is pressed. You do not need a coastal arena to explain it. Penhallow, Healeys and a September field will do.