Our Wassailing celebration is now an annual event. We all gathered on a cold, sunny crisp morning to wake up the trees in the traditional way. Lots of noise, tapping of trees and bread and cider is supposed to give us a good harvest of apples. Our Green Man lead the way around the orchard, and we sang traditional Wassailing songs and read poems. Many thanks to our musicians and everyone who added to the event.
On a very windy and rainy evening, members of the orchard braved the weather to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Some well placed windbreaks made the forest garden a ‘cosy’ setting for our get together. Many thanks to Jim, Noel, Linda and Simon for providing the music. We shared poems, mulled cider and good food. We lasted about an hour before the weather drove us home but it was a very good evening.
Orchard members and their families joined in with our apple harvest. The apples, all heritage varieties, were picked, sorted and shared and juiced. We were lucky to have another sunny day although a bit chilly. All members receive a box of apples and we also share the apples with our local organisations and community.
The only question remains… what to cook with all of our delicious apples.
During our recent fundraising event we were able to twin with four communities around the world, supporting the building of a toilet and hygiene education. We asked everyone who joined us on the day to choose which countries to twin our toilet with and we picked the following: Nepal, Malawi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan.
Our certificates will be proudly displayed in our compost toilet. Why not pay a visit!
What an amazing day we had on Saturday! We started our sponsored walk around the Orchard in the fog and ended the day in sunshine. An enormous thank you to everyone who joined in on the day walking laps of the orchard or donated and supported us online.
We achieved our total of 84 laps, 28 km in total and we raised £265.00 to twin our compost toilet with 4 families and communities who will benefit from clean sanitation. We will update which countries we twinned with when this has been organised.
You are all amazing!
Toilet Twinning is helping to transform lives in some of the poorest places on the planet. Vulnerable households will: learn about the importance of sanitation and hygiene; build their own loo; gain access to clean water; enjoy better health – and take a massive step out of generational poverty.
We are holding a sponsored walk around the Orchard to raise funds to twin our compost toilet. We are planning to walk 84 circuits of the orchard.
£60 lets us twin with one toilet, if we raise more than this it will be brilliant because we can twin with more toilets!
There was a great turnout of members and their families to see how many different species of moth we had caught in the moth traps in the Orchard. Here are just a few of them, and a list of the moths we found. It highlights the great diversity of wildlife in the orchard! Many thanks to Terry and Viv for organising this.
In March members of the Orchard and Allotments joined a willow weaving workshop and produced willow pyramids. Some of them are now in use around the allotments supporting beans, peas and flowers.
On a windy, chilly evening with a clear, star filled sky, Orchard members switched off their lights and celebrated Earth Hour in the Forest Garden. A fire helped keep the cold at bay and we were able to use a telescope to view the moon and Jupiter. No shooting stars this year unfortunately, next year maybe!
We will be celebrating Earth Hour as always in the Orchard from 8.15 pm on Saturday 23th March 2024
For more information about Earth Hour 2024 please visit the website https://www.earthhour.org/
Lanchester Community Orchard 