Community Apple Pressing Day

If you are interested in orchards, apples, apple trees, cider or just fancy trying out something different this Saturday afternoon why not pop down to our Swan Barn Farm Community Apple pressing day.

We will be here from 10.30 till 3 for this family freindly fun event.  If your apple tree at home did well this year why not bring along your own apples and join in using our fantastic heritage press and scratter to turn it in to the finest tasting apple juice you will ever have come across.We will check how many apples you bring and you will be able to take home the equivalent in juice (bring a container!). The juice is pretty fantastic, but if you want to go the extra mile we can also instruct you how to turn it into your own delicious cider. Our orchards did pretty badly fruit wise this year due to the terrible weather at pollination time, but we have managed to beg, borrow and steal enough apples for the day so even if your tree was bare (or you have no tree) you can still come along and join in.

Our press has been making apple juice around Haslemere for over 100 years and is still going strong.

The scratter was kindly donated by a friend of Black Down, it came from a small farm in France. They are both fascinating machines, that require quite a bit of human power to get them working, they are great fun to work with.

The Black Down countryside team will be on hand to offer advice or answer any of your orchard, apple, or cider related questions. In the light of this years bad harvest we hope to increase chances of good luck for next year by holding a community wassail and bringing some positive appley luck to the orchard, further details coming soon.

Refreshments will be available on the day and there is plenty of space for kids to run around and have fun, hope to see you there.

 

Chicken and chips

Our new chickens have arrived.

They are Light Sussex chickens, and its great having them here. We have four that were kindly funded by our local supporters group, they are a dual purpose meat and egg laying bird that are traditional for the local area. The act of going out and collecting your eggs for breakfast puts you in touch with the local countryside and its management in one of the simplest ways I know, I hope the many volunteers who stay at Speckled Wood and the Basecamp will get to know them well.

We have also sourced some Speckled Sussex Bantam fertile eggs that we will be hatching out in an incubator to add to the flock. Bantams are miniture chickens, about a quarter to a thrid of the size of a normal chicken. The name fits so well with the project we just had to have some. They lay little eggs which taste delicious and make the best cakes. The eggs arrived today, its going to be fun seeing them hatch, really looking forward to it.

Meanwhile up in the orchard our Knobby Russet (yes, that is a real name) apple tree has been looking a bit poorly lately. There was a ram lamb in there last year who was uncastrated, he had a bit more vigour about him than the castrated males I usually raise and he unfortunately set about butting, nibbling and scratching against this particular apple tree with such enthusiasm I fear it will not survive. A trip to the abbatoir and several very tasty home cooked meals dealt with the problem of the errant lamb, but what to do about the tree. Its the wrong time of year for grafting, but it is the right time of year for chip budding…

All fruit trees are grafted onto rootstocks, normaly in the spring you graft a twig onto a rootstock, but for trees that are either very rare or where you need to do something in the summer chip budding is the answer, using this technique you can use just a single bud to grow an entire new tree.

I headed up into the orchard and fetched back a twig from the knobby russet.

Form that I selected one single heathy looking bud and carefully cut it from the twig. You need to use a nice sharp knife to do this with, so you get a good clean cut.

I then took this bud to where we have some rootstock tree’s growing.

We grow these specially for grafting our new apple and pear trees on to. We use old fashioned rootstocks which grow a much larger tree than you would get in a modern orchard, it gives us bigger trees, better for wildlife and much prettier, even if the picking is a bit more awkward!

From the rootstock tree I cut a small sliver to correspond exactly with the bud I had prepared.

Its important to get a really good match, poor contact will mean the new bud will fail.

The bud was then held in place using a bit of cling film. Beeswax or proper grafting tape would be a bit more traditional, but time was pressing.

Early next spring the cling film will be taken off and the top of the rootstock tree above the new bud will be pruned off entirely. The single bud will then sprout and a shoot will emerge which will form a new tree, of exactly the same genetic make up as our original knobby russet. In a year or two from now it will be ready to be planted back out in the orchard.

Over the next few years we will be raising as many of our own trees as possible to boost the stock in our traditional orchards here at Swan Barn Farm. If you are interested in finding out more, or want to get involved with the apple pressing and cider making at harvest time look out for our apple pressing event later in the year.

Apple pressing and Shingling

Last friday we had our first apple pressing of the year. A group of working holiday volunteers who had spent the week with us on the building and in the orchards got to see the process in action.

First of all the apples were all quartered and any rotten bits were discarded. There was a fantastic collection of varieties of apple on display, including some which are quite rare these days. That’s the best thing about making apple juice and cider in this way, it is such a product of the place it grew, no two pressings (sometimes even bottles) are ever going to taste quite the same.

From the chopping boards the apples were taken over to the scratter (its the machine with the big fly wheel on it to the right above). The scratter squishes the apples and turns them into pulp. It was restored in our workshop a couple of years ago having been kindly donated by a freind of the estate. It is hand powered, and takes a bit of effort to get it going, its really effective though and processes a trug full of quartered apples in not much time at all.

From the scratter the crushed apples go over to the press. A frame is set up with a cloth inside it, the scratted apples go into the cloth which is folded over, the frame is taken off and a board put on top of the “cheese”, as it is known.

Several of these cheeses are built up, and as the weight starts to build the juice starts to flow. when the stack is high enough the press is wound down to squash the stack and force out the rest of the apple juice.

Our press has been in action in this part of the world for at least a hundred years. It was also restored in our workshop using Swan Barn Farm oak and plenty of TLC. The result has been a machine which people really enjoy using. It takes a bit of hard work to process the apples, but the required teamwork and resulting flood of apple juice is always really satisfying.

It collects in the wooden tray at the bottom, when there is enough there the cork is pulled and out flows the juice. We drank plenty of it on the day, and it tasted fantastic. The rest was put into fermenters to be turned into cider. A lot of this was sent home with our volunteers (along with some cider making instructions), but a fair bit stayed here too. I’m looking forward to some of it being ready in time to toast the building with when we have finished.

If you want to find out more about the mysteries of cider making, why not pop along with some apples to our community pressing day this saturday, 10.30 till 3.

Meanwhile, on the building, another piece of significant progress has been made, we have started to put some of our shingles on the roof.

I have no idea how many people have worked in the woods helping us to make them, but I know its a lot. Its something we are all very proud of. When the roof is finished it will be the result of so much effort by so many people I think it will be really quite special.

The shingles are made of coppiced sweet chesnut, and any number of volunteer groups have been helping us to make them over the past year. We have 12000 or so made, we think we will need another 3000 or so in the end, but the onsett of autumn has meant we really had to start getting some of them in place so the main section of the roof at least could be finished.

Chris and Sam have come in to help us get the roof right, and we are glad of the help, as it is quite a complicated job, especially as our hand made shingles are not exactly uniform in size and shape.

I think the overall effect is pretty spectacular though. There is a long way to go to get it finished, but we are all glad they have started to go up.

 

Apple Pressing Day (and news from the bees)

Coming up on the 1st October (10.30 till 3) we have a community apple pressing day here at Swan Barn Farm. It will be an opportunity to see the Speckled Wood Building, as well as to take part in pressing and processing any surplus apples you can get your hands on. The idea is that you bring along any apples you can beg, borrow or scrump and then join in the fun of chopping them, feeding them through our scratter (which crushes them) and then the apple press to produce the finest tasting apple juice you will ever come across.

The scratter and press are both historic pieces of equipment, and people have a lot of fun helping us to operate them. The team here will check how many apples you brought and then dole out a fair portion of juice for you to take home. You can either enjoy it fresh over the next couple of days, or, even better still, follow the instructions we give you to turn it into cider!

The team here have been responsible over recent years for planting 3 new orchards, and will also be on hand to try and answer any of your apple or orchard based questions.

If you can’t find any apples (and I’m sure a bit of inginuity will lead to finding a few) you can always just come along, partake of the tea and cake that will be on offer and join in the fun processing and pressing the fruit. The postcode for the Farm is GU27 2HU, hope to see you there!

Meanwhile, back in the orchard, the bees have been busy making honey. This was recently removed from the hive for processing. They are a new colony this year, and as such I had not been expecting much of a crop, but they have done really well, and we should get a few jars so our volunteers can get a taste of the local wildflowers.

The bee’s store the honey in a box called a super (because its for honey which is superfluous to their needs) which sits at the top of the hive above their nest.

The frames within a beehive encourage them to build nice straight combs, this makes handling and managing the bees much easier as without frames the combs can twist and turn all over the place. This is fine for the bee’s, but makes the beekeepers life a bit problematic. You can see this effect in the piece of honeycomb in the picture below which one of my colonies recently built inside the roof space in their hive.

When the supers get back to the honey processing room (kitchen in my case) each frame has its cappings cut off and is then put into the extractor.

The extractor is like a sort of giant spin drier, it spins the frames round fast and the honey flies out of them and collects at the bottom of the vessel.

The honey is then filtered and bottled. I don’t heat treat it or change it in any way, it comes in the jar just as the bee’s made it, a natural product which is full of character and of benefit to the local environment. Honey bee’s are having a really tough time of things at the moment, and without beekeepers to look after them would have pretty much dissappeered from the countryside. The problems are caused by a parrasitic mite which sucks the blood of the bee’s and spreads diseases. This mite is very difficult for them to control without help and can kill off entire colonies in no time at all. We all rely heavily on honey bees, both for our food and polination of many species of flower and tree. The simple action of putting honey from a local beekeeper on your toast in the morning can have knock on benefits across the countryside.

There are a number of ways of managing the mites in a colony, I try to avoid chemical input wherever possible, and one of the methods I use is placing a small tray of thyme oil in the colony after the honey has been removed.

This natural oil has a narcotic effect on the mites, knocking them off the back of the bees. Its just one of a range of weapons being deployed at the moment in defence of the bees.

This years honey crop turned out to be a big surprise to me. Haslemere is surrounded by heathland, and for all the time I have been beekeeping people have been telling me how lucky I must be to get heather honey. Its a highly sought after product which commands a high price. Up till now though I have hardly ever had any, the heather is often really difficult for the bee’s to work, as it flowers when the colony is starting to wind down for the winter. Its a useful source of winter feed, but I rarely see any in my jars.

This year though the supers were packed full fo the stuff. I did the extracting with a freind who is also a beekeeper, we were extracting from three diffent apiary sites around the town, mine, his and Swan Barn Farm, and each one of them was packed full of heather honey. Fantastic tasting stuff and as I said highly thought of, but an absolute pain to extract. It is one of the only substances in the world which is thixotropic, this means when it is stirred or agitated it turns liquid, but when it stands still it is a solid, most unusual. The extractor got properly clogged up and we made a bit of a mess. We managed to get it out of the combs in the end, but it was really difficult work. I had noticed the heather was flowering really nicely this year, but hadn’t been expecting this. Its the first time I have seen it in eight years of beekeeping, I wonder when I will see it again?

 

The rain is back…

The rain has returned over the last couple of days, can’t really complain though, its been such a dry summer so far.

Our biosurvey volunteers have made a great job of surveying the meadows, and today are entering data from the survey onto the computers as well as making a few shingles for the Speckled Wood project.

Meanwhile on the build site the framing team have understandably been sheltering from the weather. This has meant a move inside the newly membraned roof to get on with a few jobs where it is nice and dry.

The first fix electrics have been going in, and the inside of the roof has been plasterboarded. The small black squares you can see in the plasterboard are where our rooflights will be going. Each of the upstairs bedrooms will have one, and there is another one which will end up over the upstairs gallery.

The rain will be doing the world of good to all sorts of plants and trees which had been starting to feel a bit parched, I should think the orchards here at Swan barn Farm will be particularly gratefull for it. Most of the trees in our new Speckled Wood Orchard are doing well. In the other orchard, which backs on to Haslemere High Street I have been really pleased to see how much fruit there is growing this year. We planted it about six years ago, and it looks like this year it is going to produce our first decent crop.

The denistons superb gage tree has brances weighed down with gage’s and just near this one of my favourite apples is having a great year as well.

Its a knobby russet, probably the ugliest, whilst also being one of the tastiest apples you will ever see. Its skin is so heavily russeted that it cracks and folds and goes knobbly all over, a very unpromising looking thing, but later in the year eaten with a glass of cold cider and some bread and blue cheese it is sheer apple heaven.

Swan Barn Farm Orchard

You might remember earlier in the year us pruning the orchard just behind Haslemere High Street. I though it might be nice to show you what it is looking like now spring has sprung.

Pretty spectacular I think!

The blossom on the cherries, plums and pears is pretty much at its peak right now, well worth going to see. The apples will follow on next with their blossom, over the next couple of weeks. The orchard is less than a minutes walk from Haslemere High Street. Head through the gaps either behind Collingwood Batchelor or the CAB and you will go through the town walk and right past the orchard.

Its particularly nice to see the trees we planted six years ago starting to do well. I remember very well the day we planted the new trees, there were only five old trees left at the time, and now there is an entire vibrant new orchard springing up on the towns doorstep. I reckon looking at the way the trees are developing that this year could be the first of our decent sized crops. Look out later on this year, we are planning on holding an apple pressing event where we will invite people to come down to the farm bringing whatever apples they can lend their hands on. We will then run them through our historic scratter (a sort of apple crusher) and press and send you home with the juice plus a set of instructions for how to turn it into your own delicious cider.

This was the blossom on one of the old pear tree’s, last year it provided me with a batch of surprisingly nice perry. Old orchard tree’s are a fantastic wildlife resource, we plan to look after these keep them as long as possible, yesterday they were alive with the buzz of the local bee’s making the most of the nectar and pollen.

Another day in the orchard

This time we were planting tree’s.

There is nothing as good for your spirits as planting a tree, especially if its an apple tree. And if its a whole new orchard, well it doesn’t get much better.

Last week we planted the new orchard at the front of the basecamp. 18 tree’s have gone in, more will follow over the next couple of years. For this orchard we have gone for a mix of traditional and modern varieties as well as trying to get varieties that will be ready at different times so we have a long fuiting season.

Two of my favourites have been planted in this orchard, Orleans Rainette and Cornish Gilliflower. One for flavour and one because you can’t forget your roots. I was really pleased when these were two of the trees that attracted a sponsor, I hope they mean something to their sponsors too. We still have tree’s available for sponsorship if  anyone has the means, all of the money raised goes straight to the Speckled Wood project.

This was the gilliflower going in. Thanks very much to Lesley up at the stables on Lynchmere Ridge for donating a trailer full of well rotted horse manure to ensure they get the best possible start in life.

They all have good solid tree cages to protect them from browsing damage, and have biodegradable mulch matts to ensure that the water in the soil goes to the tree rather than to the grass growing around its base. We also put gaurds on them to prevent rabbits from nibbling the bark.

The tree’s look so small and delicate when they go in, not much more than twigs really, you can barely see them in the tree cages above. They are pretty tough little things though, and it wont take long for them to start to grow. I should think we will see the first of the fruit from them in three or four years time.

Willow had a pretty good day too, practising on the sheep.

If you are interested in locally produced food and live not too far away the Landshare group of Transition Town Haslemere have a meeting on 9th March at 7.30pm in The Georgian in the High Street. New members are needed for a community vegetable garden at Roundhurst on the slopes of Black Down, why not come along and find out more. Its a stunning location and a really nice garden, the group is very freindly and there is loads of space for people to grow all sorts of interesting veg. You can find out more at http://transitionhaslemere.org/newsite/participate/landshare-group or http://www.facebook.com/pages/Haslemere-community-veg-growers/178983752134922

A day in the orchard

Yesterday we spent the day working in one of our orchards. Its just behind Haslemere High Street so is really easy to go and visit.

Its a lovely peaceful place, and in a few weeks time will be full of blossom. Yesterdays task was to prune the apple and pear trees, as well as repairing some of the tree guards.

About five years ago this orchard only have five or six trees left, we put together an application for some funding and got together the money to restore it. Since then we have planted 30 or so apple, pear, plum, cherry, damson and gage trees. They are all old fashined traditional varieites. We planted them on traditional rootstocks which will allow them to gow up to 20-25 feet high, much taller than a modern orchard, but it will mean they will provide a really usefull space for the local wildlife.

The trees are just starting to come into their own now, and last year we got our first decent crop of apples. Of course as they get taller they also take longer to prune! what used to take an hour or two now takes all day. We are also training some of the branches downwards to make the fruit easier to pick, just in case you come by and wonder why the branches are tied down with string. Over time these branches will adapt to the shape we are training them into and the string will be removed.

We also spent some time repairing our tree gaurds and making sure all of the trees are property protected. This pear tree is much bigger than the sort of thing we would usually put a gaurd on, but the sheep were having a bit of a nibble at its bark so we thought we would give it a bit of protection.

Not to sure what the sheep thought about that.

We run apple pressing days in the autumn with our volunteers where we teach them how to make apple juice and cider with the fruits of our orchard, we are hoping for a bumper crop this year.

We restored an old apple press and scratter to use on these days. The press is one which has been in use in Sussex for years, there is a picture on the wall of a local pub of our press being used in the 1800′s. This is it being used last year.

The scratter was kindly donated by John Simpson, who does a lot of work for us on Black Down. Prior to coming to us it had a plant growing out of the top of it.

They were both restored using oak from our coppice woodland.

We are saving the best (hopefully!) of last years cider for a party on the day we raise the main frame of the new building. If you are here helping out be carefull, its strong stuff!