We planted the orchard in 1993 (the trees were a wedding present). At the time there were very few Irish varieties available, and we spent quite some time looking and eventually found 3.
About a year after we planted we saw an advert from the Irish Seed Savers Association, looking for 1/2 acre sites on which to plant Irish varieties. Oh well!
We orginally planted Irish Peach, Ecklinville Seedling and Ard Cairn Russet which are Irish varieties, and then any trees we have lost over the years have been replaced with Irish apple varieties from the Seed Savers, namely: Sheeps Snout, Uncle John’s Cooker, Yellow Pitcher.
We also planted James Grieve, Bramley, Lord Derby and Worcester Pearmain. So that we now have about 16 apple trees.
The rest of the orchard is made up of pears, plums, greengage, damsons, 2 medlars, 2 quinces and 1 cherry which does fruit but we never get them because the birds always beat us to them!
We were taken a bit by surprise on Saturday as the first of the apples were ready about 3 weeks ahead of last year, and so we had to get set up for pressing our Worcester Pearmain and James Grieve. Four trees in all. Apologies to Ella who wanted to come and see the process, but we will be doing it again!
From blossom in May ............
..........to fruit ripe for picking in late August.
Onto the quad bike, which carries the crates to where we are set up.
And with unparalleled concentration, the apples go into the crusher...........
.....which chops and macerates them into small pieces ready for pressing.
We have a small screw press which takes about 1/2 a crate of crushed apples at a time, and depending on the variety produces 2 to 3 litres of juice per pressing.
We then bottle up the juice, and freeze it. Nothing added! And the juice keeps perfectly for up to a year.
Our afternoons work yielded up about 35 litres of delicious juice from 4 trees. Much better than letting them go to waste.
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