ENTERTAINMENT ON THE FARM
58
LIFE ON THE FARM LIVING OFF THE LAND
It appears to be a great year for fruit. Our apple trees are laden, the brambles are heavy with blackberries; plums, damsons and sloes are plentiful and even our young pear orchard has a good crop of pears.
The past two years have been below average for fruit on our farm. The late frosts we had in May 2020 and 2021 really hit the top fruit hard, but everything in nature seeks balance, so given better conditions and a drought that hasn’t hit established trees, we have plenty of apples. It is nice to see the young trees that dad and I planted four or five years ago fruiting well too and in fact we have got some broken branches, such is the weight of the fruit.
You may know that due to various reasons, including over supply and changing tastes, cider apples are not in quite such demand at the moment. Unfortunately therefore, we may struggle to sell our bumper crop, which is a real shame, not to mention the lost income.
We do however have a few eating and cooking apple trees. Worcester and Bramley apples being most common here. Interestingly the apples from Worcester trees dad and I planted do not appear to be quite as tasty as the older ones probably planted by my grandfather. I intend on doing another taste test this week. So possibly without much option to sell our cider apples, I am going to try and keep as many eaters and cookers as I can. Of course that will involve a bit of work, but you really
LIVE24-SEVEN.COM
cannot beat eating the food that you have harvested yourself, apple and blackberry crumble being pretty high on that list.
I have written about the dry summer before and I am sure you will not have missed hearing about the extremely dry and hot weather. The water table must be low, showing to us here because our well is struggling to keep up with demand. We are lucky to have our own water supply, so I hope that a wet winter will help to replenish the underground water and put our supply right.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
