George and Chris from the Communities in Focus Project joined us for our Wassailing event. The project aims to record people, places and moments in our local communities.
George and Chris have created a wonderful record of Wassailing in the orchard and shared some of their photos with us. If you’d like to see all of the photos and find out more about the project, you can visit the Communities in Focus website here.
Every year we hold our Wassailing event, this is a tradition that’s held around the country at this time of year. In the past people saw it as a way of thanking the trees for the fruit, wake up the trees ready for Spring and bring luck for a good crop of fruit.
This year we had another bright sunny, snowy day for our Wassailing. We were led round the orchard by our Green Man, and musicians leading us in traditional songs and dances. Our trees were woken up with loud noises and fed cider and bread to encourage another bumper crop of apples. Many thanks to our musicians and dancers and our Green Man. Hopefully we will see the results in September!
It’s been a cold and snowy start to the new year in the orchard. The trees are firmly asleep but the cold weather is good news because apple trees need 50 days of the temperature to be 5 degrees Celsius each winter to be productive. The snowy sunny weather has also created a winter wonderland in the orchard.
Hanging up bunches of Mistletoe is a long held tradition. Orchard members braved the rain today to cut bunches of mistletoe to be sold in our village greengrocers. Despite the rain we were able to deliver 15 bunches of mistletoe all ready for Christmas!
Although nearly all of the apples have been picked, and the fruit trees and bushes are settling down for the Winter, the Orchard is still active. If you take a walk around the paths you will be able to find many different fungi. Fungi play an important part of the Orchard’s eco system. Don’t forget to look only though, non of the fungi are edible!
The Orchard is now showing off its Autumn colours. It’s well worth a visit while our fruit trees still have their leaves. The nut walk is particularly colourful as is our Walnut tree.
This year’s wonderful summer has produced a great crop of apples in the orchard. On a bright Sunday morning, orchard members enjoyed the sun, wandering round the orchard picked apples. Our younger members had good fun choosing their own apples and tasting them. Everybody pitched in to help with the apple juicing, and we all went away with bottles of fresh, organic apple juice.
When the Community Orchard was first established, we planted many heritage varieties of apples and pears. We also planted different fruit trees with a long and ancient history. One of these was a mulberry tree. This has thrived over the years and we now get a small crop of mulberries each year.
Recently we were donated a second mulberry tree which we planted beside the Forest Garden. It has already produced a few mulberries and hopefully we will have more in years to come. Many thanks to our donors for this kind gift to the Orchard.
We have all experienced some wild and windy weather over the last week when Storm Floris arrived last Monday and sadly one of our plum trees was blown down. The tree was covered with plums and would have provided a wonderful crop. Hopefully, since the tree was split from the main trunk rather than completely blown over, the plums may still ripen.
Six orchard members got together on a beautiful sunny evening to take part in our annual wild flower survey. Armed with reference books and apps we surveyed the whole orchard.
We identified 57 species, up from 53 species last year. Some plants such as Deadly Nightshade, Camomile, Harebells, Alkanet, Herb Robert, Hop Trefoil, Red Campion Rosebay Willow Herb, Tufted Vetch, wild carrot and Woad were not spotted this year.
We are so pleased that our species numbers are up again and how diverse the Orchard environment is!
Lanchester Community Orchard 