Another orchard extension

Last year we tripled the site of our orchard, from 1000 to 3000 square metres (3/4 of an acre in old money). At that time, there was a plot of similar size beside our own that a friend was trying to buy, but this year he decided against it, and asked if we were interested. After a bit of consideration, I said no, but a few weeks ago, while walking through our own orchard, I strolled though the plot for sale and began to have second thoughts.

This new plot has not been looked after for quite some time. The trees are often too close together, and in summer, the canopy is almost unbroken even between rows. Very overgrown, and what I kept describing as like something out of Middle Earth. My original negative decision was based on the amount of work our existing orchard already needs. Although it was better cared for, I still have a lot of cutting to do to rejuvenate, or open up most of the trees, and the thoughts of taking on another 90 or 100 trees was a bit overwhelming. Until I strolled through...

The man selling it got my number from my friend, and called me to ask if I was interested, and I told him we'd think about it over the weekend. Which I did, to a rather extreme level. My poor wife was sick of me running through scenarios, and pointed out that we wouldn't have to do anything if we owned it. There's no commercial pressure, just a hobby, and to be honest, part of the appeal was to try and preserve this as an orchard, as it borders onto tillage, and other sections of the overall orchard have been felled and sown with crops instead (see the treeless strips in the aerial image below).

So, the decision was made. We agreed a fair price, and today the legal contracts were signed, so we are now formally the owners. This now doubles our overall orchard size to over 6000 square metres (1.5 acres), which is rather daunting as a hobby!

Green areas are what we've owned till now. Today we added the red area.

The orchard itself has six rows of threes, four of which are continuations of one of our existing plots. The varieties of trees are pretty must the same, as they were all planted at the same time, in 1958. Varieties that were popular then, like Glockenapfel, Boskoop, Jonathan, Jonagold, Goldparmäne, Brettacher, Cox's Orange Pippin, and several others that I have not yet identified, but which are really interesting in terms of flavour profile.

Originally, the ends of every row had cherry trees, which our current plot is missing, so we will gain, I think, 5 very large cherry trees. Inside the cherry trees, each row then had a few pear trees, and this is repeated a thee ends of the rows we are purchasing. Mostly they seem to be conference, mirroring the ends of the current rows, but there are a few other varieties, like Bürgermeisterbirne/Köstliche aus Charneux, and I hope some perry pear trees and more Williams Christ.

We will have our work cut out, and probably need to take some drastic measure to open the plot up, for the sake of the trees. Personally, I'd also like to get in a full row of classic English and French cider apples, but let's see how it all develops. I'm probably nuts...

Milestone: sandstone framing done

The facade, around the 1930's, we think.

Back at the end of 2010, when we bought our house (wow... I have to let that sink in for a moment... 8 years!), the front door was a really ugly aluminium thing from the 70s or 80s, probably. At that time, they had taken out a section of the original wall, rebuilt it with clay blocks to straighten it and fitted the brown aluminium door. They had discarded the original sandstone frames visible in the black and white photo above, and put some tiling around the door frame. It was probably the height of modernity at the time, but by the time we got it, the door was not sealing properly, thereby letting in a cold breeze, and of course, the tiling was really ugly and dated, not fitting with the age of the house at all. We decided to leave the door in until the major works were finished, as we didn't want a shiny new door getting damaged when bring materials in and out.

2011, the "modern" framing around the original door.

In December, 2016, pretty much all of the heavy internal works had been completed, and we finally got a new front door, a little more in keeping with the house, and which made a huge difference to the heating. No more draft, no more ice on the inside of the door in deepest winter.

December 2016, the new door was fitted.

At the time, I'd cut out an L-form profile around the door to accommodate a sandstone surround, which would bring it back to the original style. I made sketches, with dimensions, to make it easy for prospective stonemasons. During 2017, we had other things on our mind, but had made tentative queries seeking pricing from a few stonemasons in the area, but most were happy just doing gravestones (a steady supply of undemanding customers, I guess), and made ridiculous offers.

How it has looked since December 2016.

In early 2018, the Mayor suggested a stonemason that they had used, and who specialised in restoration of old buildings, Melchior Naturstein. Really nice work. I mean, they normally do medieval church and castle renovations! By summer we'd met the boss, and he gave us a price that didn't induce cardiac arrest, and we ordered.

I guess they are pretty busy with much larger projects, so it too a while before they had time to fit us in, but today was the day they came to fit the surrounds. The profile was modelled on the second original door frame, which is still in situ (see below), and we wanted a proper step in front of the door, for which we had no template, so trusted them to decide on a block step profile that would fit.

The secondary entrance, with original sandstone frame.

And the result? I'm blown away. I didn't want to do this, as I thought it wouldn't be worth it, and I wanted it just plastered and finished. But my wife really thought it'd be good. She was completely right, and it was worth the wait

The front of the house looks complete! It's not quite done though. In spring the lower half will be painted, and the door on the far left needs a new outer stall door, like that on the far right (both former cow stalls). But for now, it just makes the facade look so much better. Really happy.

Apple Harvest and Cider 2018

2018 was a strange year for our apples. The spring started warm and dry, and like all across Europe, the summer was a scorcher, and very dry indeed, shortening the season on many crops. "Notreif", or emergency ripe, one of my farmer friends said. And apples were of course affected. Varieties that we would normally be harvesting in mid-October were dropping en masse from early September, and the quality of the drops was not great, presumably a reason the trees decided to shed them so early. Nevertheless, it was indeed a bumper year for fruit, with most trees straining under the weight of the apples.

This was also the first year harvesting from the second orchard plot we purchased around this time last year. With about three times the amount of trees we had before, we didn't really have to care about the early drops, most of which we ended up discarding, as they would not keep. But we had plenty that we properly harvested using the tried and tested tarp-and-shake method.

This year we pressed over several weekends, including pressing for friends and neighbours. In total, I think we pressed about 2.5 tonnes of fruit, using the same mill and presses as last year. This time, however, as we had a greater choice in varieties to choose from, we also pressed some single varieties, to get a feel for them. If they work alone, fine, if not, I'll either bland them or get them distilled.

As well as our apples, this year I was also offered quince by a local chap. I expected a few sackloads, but it ended up being just over 300kg, which we pressed yesterday. Quince schnapps is quite popular here, so i reckoned that's what we'd do with them. But the juice is really tasty, with a decent acidity, a slight bitterness, and lots of sugars and perfumy, fowery flavours. If it still tastes good after fermenting, I'll set some aside for ageing as a kind of quince wine.

It's a difficult fruit to process, being rather hard and quite dry. But with a fine milling, the juice is released, though from about 280kg of fruit, we got 120 litres of juice, so about 42% efficiency. Other methods might be to use a steam juicer, but we couldn't have done that in any great quantity, but we might experiment with a 5 litre batch to compare.

For ourselves, we currently have the following in fermenters:

• 60L Gloster
• 60L Goldparmäne (King of the Pippins or Reine de Reinettes)
• 60L Jonagold
• 60L Conference pears (actually to be distilled, but if it tastes nice, may keep it)
• 160L blend of several varieties, that has since been transferred to an oak barrel.
• 240L mixed varieties that is destined to be distilled in the next couple of months.
• 120L quince (also pressed for distilling, but the juice tastes so good, I may keep 60l as a wine/"quince cider", or for blending.

Pressing is not finished quite yet, as we have apples in storage (tumping, I learned is the correct term) that will be pressed for a keeved batch next weekend. Last year i made 50 litres of keeved cier as an experiment, and while i didn't think I got a full keeve, it fermented long and slow in our coldest cellar, and stopped with a final gravity of 1.012, so still has quite a nice sweetness to it. I'll report more fully on this year's batch, which i will increase to 120 litres.

So quite a busy and early harvest and pressing season this year, which has further distracted me from finishing the attic conversion, but I'll try to get back to that in the coming weeks, so I can start the tree pruning with a good conscience. Speaking of which, the orchard will expand again later this year, doubling our plot to 6000 square metres (about 1.5 acres). But that'll be a post in its own right!