Community Get Together in The Orchard

Talk about being lucky with the weather.  On Sunday morning, armed with spades, hammers, staple and nails the volunteer members of the Conderton and Overbury Community Orchard met on a bright and sunny morning to plant the trees.  It was quite amazing to see the sun after one of the wettest January's in a long time.  Having said that the mission to collect the trees, on Saturday, proved a little more stressful, as the picture above demonstrates, but we got there in the end and collected the trees from Walcot Organic Nursery  

Although the soil was wet underfoot the spirit of the helpers was just brilliant.  The target was to plant 41 apple trees in the ancient orchard being restored partly funded through our Higher Level Stewardship Scheme.  This time we were planting a mixture of eating and cider apples.  Varieties such as Blenheim Orange, Cox's Orange Pipin, Worcester Pearmain for eaters, along with cider varieties such Ten Commandments, and Harry Master's Jersey will make for some very interesting taste discoveries in the years to come either picked straight from the tree or waiting a few months for the fermentation process to be completed!

Derek and Gordon set the planting pattern out and managed to get the main stakes knocked in earlier in the week, tiptoeing around the wet ridge and furrow.  Everybody turned up between 9.30 and 10 am to set up digging, planting and fertilising the trees.  It was great to see the progress across the orchard and by 12 o'clock the job was done!  We are all due to return in a couple of weeks to prune the trees we planted in the previous two years.  It is a great opportunity to see the fruits of our previous years labour growing and needing a little TLC.  I am looking forward to that morning, fingers crossed we are treated to another lovely few hours in the orchard.

First Trees Planted in the COCO

Today was the first ever planting day for COCO (Conderton and Overbury Community Orchard) and what a great day it was.  It started as a crisp sunny morning with brilliant blue sky and a light frost on the ground.  Derek and Gordon gave everyone a quick demonstration of how to plant each of the trees then armed with a map everyone grabbed their spades and set off in different directions to make a start. 

We started with 18" deep hole, filled it with a compost to act as a fertiliser, planted the tree, firming down the soil all of the time to ensure there are no air pockets.  After that a small stake was banged in next to the tree and a small strap attached to hold it firm.  More compost was applied, as a mulch to keep the weeds at bay and finally a plastic tree guard put around the tree to protect it from voles and mice.  It was wrapped up with a 6' mesh guard to stop sheep and deer nibbling the growing points then it was 'job done'.

10 cider apple trees where planted (5 'Ten Commandments' and 5 Tom Putts) and 16 perry pear trees (5 Blanckney Reds, 5 Moorcrofts and 6 Judge Amphletts) all within an hour and a half.  It was a great community effort, helped by the weather, but a great effort by everyone involved.  A huge thank you to everyone who volunteered, it's great to know the community spirit is alive and well in Overbury and Conderton.  After the planting some investigation of the new JCB was required by the engineers among us.

Orchard Exploration

On Monday the 18th July we held the first group meeting of the Overbury and Conderton Orchard Group.  The idea is to bring together interesed members of the two villages to talk about the conservation of the old traditional orchard and to find out if there was any interest in helping with the restoration.  The turnout was terrific, Denzil counted 50 people present and we had a least 2 families that could not make it!  Penelope introduced the evening then John Clarke spoke about his experience with the Kemerton Orchard Group before I spoke about the wider Higher Level Stewardship options that we are embracing on the farm.  Eventaully, it is hoped that the orchard group could become self sufficient in the management of the orchard (complying with the HLS scheme rules-obviously) interacting with the farm's requirements of the orchard, for grazing. 

The group will then have the opportunity to develop the conservation within the orchard, looking at erecting bird boxes, bird, plant and moss identification and counting, maybe even having some community bee hives.

It is hoped to organise a follow up meeting, within two weeks to establish a name and committee structure to start leading the plans forward.  I think we will be starting up with a fruit collecting day in September, ready for winter supplies of jiuce and cider, before tree prunning and planting weekend days following up in the winter.  Keep up to date with the development of the group through this blog and the farm facebook page