Here in Sibiu, we celebrate the harvest through a variety of autumn rituals and festivals which you can read about here but here’s a question: who planted the trees?

There would be nothing to harvest without the planting of a tree. There’s a timeless saying “ an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and while we cannot take credit for coming up with this saying we can see how it was most certainly a crucial component to the creation of a bountiful harvest. 

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Transylvania has always been a mountainous region and so most of the inhabitants here lived off predominantly dairy products and simple grains. While Sibiu is renowned as being a region of gastronomy now, in the past it was not always so. It was the Hapsburgs who were responsible for bringing the abundance of the harvest which we celebrate too.

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The story goes as such, in the 1700s when the Hapsburg authorities came to the region of what is now Sibiu, they wanted to train the local boys to become soldiers. They quickly found that the young men in this region were not as healthy as normal soldiers so they brought doctors to study these boys and realized a big component was their diet. Being from a mountain region they didn’t eat too many fruits and vegetables as their diet was primarily based on grain and dairy, it was balanced at all.
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To diversify the diet of the boys and build strong soldiers they planted plentiful orchards around the village which as you can imagine was beneficial for the health of all of the locals. The tradition was quickly adopted by the local shepherds but for as many fruit trees as they would plant, bears also seemed to enjoy the new tastes introduced to the region.
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Naturally, you could understand given the importance of their diet as well as a result of the fact that animals would also enjoy the fruit, a bountiful harvest was something to be celebrated indeed. Every apple mattered, so much so that the most beautiful apples were even saved as winter decorations. Children were gifted fruits and nuts, so the autumn harvest was a time of great celebration.

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