Hoskinstown Chestnut Roast

Sunday the 10^th of May 2015 was most widely known as Mother’s Day, but it was also the day for the annual Hoskinstown Chestnut Roast.

Hoskinstown is a small town about a 40 minutes drive from Canberra’s city centre. The road to Hoskinstown provides a nice drive with beautiful scenery.

This is the fifth year the Chestnut Roast has been on and the funds raised from the event go towards the maintenance of the town’s War Memorial Hall.

The hall was constructed after World War II and built from donated corrugated iron sheets. The land it was built on was also donated. The hall itself is quite small, but there is a real sense of community that surrounds it.

The Chestnut Roast was held outside and inside the hall, which was a good thing as the weather was not permitting on Sunday.

“Usually we have marquees set up,” Rowan Simpkin, the organiser of the event told me.

But even the weather did not detract people from coming. Many of the stallholders were pessimistic about how many people would show up (normally 700 people come), but there was still a large crowd that attended.

Chestnuts were supplied by Heather and John Kane of Tweenhills Chestnuts, who have a chestnut farm near Hoskinstown. They had their Chestnut Roaster van on hand to meet the demands of the long queues for the highly anticipated roasted chestnuts.

The 1700 chestnut trees on their farm provided ample supply for the event as chestnuts are currently in season. You could buy raw chestnuts, chestnut puree, freshly roasted chestnuts along with many other locally sourced products.

Michael Devey is an apiarist from Win’s Creek Honey and had a honey and beeswax candle stall.

He had a great variety of honey and unique candles on display and all in different colours.

“The colour depends on the flowers the bees go to,” Mr Devey said.

Along with that he was also selling homemade mead, which was warmly welcomed on a cold day.

There was also a handmade chocolate stall with very unique flavours and names such as “bodacious”, a coconut, lime and white chocolate ganache chocolate, and “kick ass”, a dark chocolate chilli chocolate.

Georgie Owens is the chocolatier behind Block Chocolate.

“I call it chocolate with attitude,” she said.

The chocolate is Belgian but the other ingredients are all locally sourced from the region and her backyard.

There were craft items and handmade and one-of-a-kind jewellery.

Ann Walker, from Ann’s Unique Ethnic Jewellery, ran a jewellery stall that included repurposed items from past eras.

She was selling a fob chain that men wore on their waistcoats in the 1920s along with awards charms that were engraved and added to it.

Ms Walker designs the jewellery herself but the other items come from all over the world.

“The silver is from Morocco and Afghanistan and the beads are from Africa,” she said.

Along with the stalls was live music, espresso coffee and a sausage sizzle.

If you missed the Chestnut Roast you haven’t missed out completely. Many of the stallholders sell at the Bungendore and Braidwood markets and the Chestnut Roaster can be found at the Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets on Saturdays and Sundays throughout May and June.

By Friedel Marquardt