Our traditional Wassailing day took place again on a chilly but fairly dry day. The Green Man attended and we feed the trees with bread and cider and made lots of noise to wake the trees up from their winter sleep. Hopefully the bread and cider will encourage a bumper crop of apples this year. We were lucky to be accompanied by some wonderful musicians and singers who added to the fun. Many thanks to them!
This year alongside our apple harvest day we set up a stall in the village. Apples of all varieties were placed on the stand and everyone was invited to taste these heritage varieties rarely seen in shops.
Paintings by the Grandparents Climate Change Group have been exhibited alongside the painted Easter Eggs. The Orchard event continues throughout the week, ending on Sunday.
The orchard has been decorated with hand painted Easter Eggs to celebrate Easter. Members, family and friends of all ages from 18 months to 97 helped to decorate the eggs. A walk around the orchard showed the amazing variety and creativity of everyone who joined in with the event.
As well as spotting the Easter Eggs, you could lookout for ‘rabbits’ and Peter Rabbit. Families who took part were able to claim a chocolately treat donated by Lanchester Wines. We hope you were able to come up and wander round. If not, you might like to see some of the decoreated eggs in the photos below.
Members have continued to visit the orchard throughout the summer and we were delighted once again to be included in the Garden Trail organised in aid of the Community Centre.
The open spaces allowed us to plan a route around the orchard enabling our visitors to visit safely. Some or our families even brought a picnic and made the most of their visit.
As usual, we had lots of help from our members, a big thank you to them.
Despite the damp, rainy October we have been experiencing, we were lucky to have a sunny morning for our annual apple picking and juicing day. Despite the poor crop of apples we were able to pick enough to share with the orchard members and produce some bottles of juice.
Although the apple crop may have been disappointing this year we have had a bumper crop of hazel and cob nuts.
We were not quite so lucky with the weather for this year’s celebration of Earth Hour! However, the rain stopped and a still evening with not wind meant that we could sit out around the brazier. The skies were mainly cloudy, but towards the end of the evening, the clouds began to thin and we could see some stars.
Our young orchard members had a brilliant time running around with their tourches enjoying the experience of playing in the dark. They were really interested in the star gazing and very knowledgable.
As usual, there was some lovely food to share and mulled cider. Thanks to all who joined in to celebrate Earth Hour 2019.
If you would like to find out more about Earth Hour then please visit the website by clicking here.
Thanks to the organisational efforts of Sonny Shepherd, members and friends of the Orchard and Margery Flatts allotments were able to take part in a basket weaving workshop led by Joe from Abundant Earth.
Joe was a brilliant teacher, talking us all through the processes of making a traveller basket. Starting with two circles, we were all able to produce, with help from Joe, a beautiful woven basket. Joe made it look easy but it was trickier in practice and you definitely needed to know your left from your right!
As it was a day workshop, we all brought along some lunch to share, so we all ate well too!
Many thanks to Sonny for organising the days, and look forward to the next one!
Many of the orchard members came together for our annual apple picking and juicing day. A tent was set up to sort the apples for eating and to share them between members.
Any apples unfit for eating were juiced. The apples had to be cut up, chopped then pressed. The juice was then bottled for members to take away.
We also took the opportunity to take samples of each apple for a later apple tasting session. The orchard grows a wide variety of apples, many of which are not available to buy in shops. Each one has it’s own distinct flavour and produces a different type of juice.
Village apple juicing afternoon
During the afternoon, eight village families brought their own apples along to be juiced. All had responded to the advert we had placed in the Village Voice. We soon had a production line going with orchard members staying to help.
We were so pleased that the orchard and allotments were included as places to visit during the Garden Open Day. Although the weather was mixed, we still had up to 50 visitors walking around and finding out more about the orchard and allotments. We had so many positive comments from our visitors and some decided to join as members.
Lanchester Community Orchard 