It's the Ficksburg Festival, my cherry!

The Ficksburg Festival takes place this year from 18 to 20 November 2010!

Ficksburg didn't mean that much to me until I vis­ited the pretty little town set on the banks of the Caledon River. It lies at the foot of the beau­ti­ful Imperani Mountain in the Free State, for those of you who didn't know, and I had only heard of it before the fest­ival because a school friend of mine hailed from there (and since we were at school in Durban at the time, you can under­stand how she was regarded with a fair amount of  incredulity).

First off let me say that if you're a fan of cher­ries, then this is the fest­ival to attend. For the last couple of years at least, cher­ries seem to have given the shelves of my local Pick n Pay the run around. That, or they were in and off the shelves so fast that I didn't even catch a whiff of the dainty red stoned fruit! Thus a trip to the Eastern Free State around the third week of November may be the closest you will get to this delect­able dainty ...

The Ficksburg Cherry Festival is the longest run­ning fest­ival in South Africa – 42 years old this year. The whole town comes out in cel­eb­ra­tion. There is a huge mar­ket, cherry tours, a half mara­thon, cherry product com­pet­i­tions, beer fests, a new food and wine fiesta, the incred­ibly pop­u­lar, and slightly hor­ri­fy­ing, cherry pip-spitting con­test, the 'ready, steady, bake' com­pet­i­tion as well as a quick les­son in how to make cherry mam­poer, a cherry liqueur known as the local 'moonshine'.

Since I was there the fest­ival has had a slight shift in focus and now sport is placed high on the list of agenda, which is prob­ably not going to do that much by way of encour­aging me to return. But a rather large per­cent­age of our soci­ety would scorn my gen­eral dis­reg­ard for sport, and would love to watch ex stars of the cricket, soc­cer and rugby world shar­ing their skills with young hopefuls.

If, how­ever, you're after some­thing with a little more cul­ture, then there are vis­its to both cherry and asparagus farms, and cruises along the water­ways just out­side the town of Ficksburg aboard what is described as the country's only float­ing cigar bar known as the White Mischief, which includes a gour­met meal and sev­eral malt whiskies. There are cook­ing work­shops for the more cre­at­ive at heart, or you can do as we did – take a steam train from Sandstone Estate and escape Ficksberg com­pletely, cher­ries in tow!

The steam train, in sim­ilar fash­ion to the now no longer func­tion­ing Apple Express in the Eastern Cape, leaves Ficksburg and travels through farm­lands towards the Caledon River on the Lesotho bor­der. It was an amaz­ing jour­ney filled with sun­flowers, fields of corn, amaz­ing examples of sand­stone farm­houses and an incred­ible sunset.

It gives you a couple of hours to quietly reflect and gaze at scenery whilst reliv­ing what it must have been like in the days when steam engines were the main form of trans­port around the coun­try. The down­side was that we left our ride until pretty late – hence I was starving and our entire quota of cher­ries for the week­end quite depleted by the time of our return (we hadn't reckoned on the length of the journey).

There is also an annual Reefsteams Association steam train ride to the Cherry Festival from Boksburg East, if steam trains are your thing, although by all accounts these are already fully booked! (con­tact them on +27 (0)11 956‑6409)

During our visit, we man­aged to stay in a little cot­tage in the neigh­bour­ing town of Fouriesburg, as by the time we began our search for some­where to stay, all the 'spots' in town had already gone. Totally off the beaten track we had a little cot­tage set beneath a pretty bower of jas­mine all to ourselves, and could use the excuse of travel to lie in in the morn­ings (we had fam­ily to meet at the festival).

The first suc­cess­fully planted cherry trees in the coun­try were in the Clocolan dis­trict in the year 1905, brought into South Africa by German mis­sion­ar­ies with early set­tlers. Today there are around 500 hec­tares worth of cherry trees in the Eastern Free State mainly in and around Ficksburg, Clocolan and Fouriesburg. Cherries are har­ves­ted from October to December (hence the choice of November for the festival).

This same region is also known as the asparagus region of South Africa and from September, hun­dreds of tons of asparagus are har­ves­ted. I can attest to how delect­able this par­tic­u­lar veget­able is when fresh from the farm!

But it is the tiny ruby-red fruit, ripe and ready to eat that is undoubtedly the star of the fest­ival. Take a tour to neigh­bour­ing orch­ards to pick and guzzle and per­haps, by the close of the week­end, you may have sati­ated your desire for this lus­cious delicacy.

For those of you who actu­ally intend return­ing with enough cher­ries intact (ungobbled) to fol­low this recipe, it is well worth savour­ing, and bor­rowed from the offi­cial cherry fest­ival web­site, cour­tesy Ronel Thake-Fouriesia:

Danish Cherry Tart
Fill a flaky pastry shell of flan case with stoned cher­ries, soaked in sugar and sprinkle with a pinch of cinnamon.

Cover the cher­ries with a mix­ture of the fol­low­ing:
100g softened but­ter
100g sugar
100g ground almonds
2 eggs

Bake the tart in an oven at a mod­er­ate tem­per­at­ure. Leave to cool, cover with goose­berry jelly and glaze with rum.

Enjoy!

Useful Links:
Cherry Festival
Ficksburg Attractions
Ficksburg Accommodation
Fouriesburg Accommodation
Free State Accommodation