The Hidden Orchard and Other Rooms

I really should have posted this a few weeks ago because the apple blossom has fallen from the trees and, if successfully pollinated, the fruit should be starting to form.

We have an orchard of sorts closer to the house but it has been neglected. It contains one ancient cooking apple tree and two crabs. There used to be damsons but they are broken down now. Recent plantings of fruit trees have not been successful. A greengage and pear never took off. The Katy apple tree that Les planted is doing OK and the currants and gooseberries are reasonable if we can get to them before the blackbirds. For the past few years Bert has been planting other trees in there including a tiny apple that Mammy grew from a pip. Who knows how that will turn out.

A few years ago we applied for and received a number of native Irish apple trees from Trees on the Land which were not planted in the orchard. They are in an out of the way spot and I'd forgotten all about them. Then, a few weeks ago Bert said that I really ought to go see the apple blossom before it dropped.

What apple blossom?

He reminded me where it was so I grabbed a camera and went out to see.

I've heard that professional gardeners advise making 'rooms' in a garden so that all is not visible at once. It's a good idea. But I'm not sure that they mean that the rooms are hidden by overgrown raspberry canes, great clumps of nettles or fallen laburnums. That's what here is like. Our outside is packed wih rooms. For instance, if you want to see our climbing hydrangea you need to go round the back of the long shed where it grows profusely with a clump of yellow welsh poppies at its feet. Bert put it there because it prefers a north facing aspect. He wasn't bothered that it faces a big dungheap.

We seem to have forgotten the 'room' hidden under the sweeping branches of the big beech trees. This was a den created by Martha and friends.

Why we can't have nice things

Five years later

More Apple Dumpling

I am finding it hard to settle to fresh blogging. So back to the trusty stopgap - a recycled post. This one is almost 20 years old. Some things have changed since I wrote it, some things haven't. Swisser is still annoying me, and I have not gotten any fatter. The big change is that Matty's not here any more. She will be gone thirteen years tomorrow.

Apple Dumpling

Mother and I went to the Hospice shop in Magherafelt yesterday where I picked up a denim skirt and pink stripy cheesecloth blouse both size 20. That shop is damn good as there is little competition in the area and there are lots of rich people (good quality cast offs) about. There are also loads of large well-fed people too as there were plenty of XL sizes. I am building up an extensive wardrobe of size 20 (and above) garments since getting amazingly fat. Sometimes I console myself that I’ve only gone up one dress size and that I was only kidding myself I was size 16 anyway.

Whilst putting on the denim skirt this morning I noticed that my waist appears to have risen. Let me explain. You know ladies that a huge amount of us wear the wrong bra size and that the starting point of measuring up for the proper size is underneath the bosom. Well that is where my waist has crept up to. My under-bust measurement and my waist are the same and in the same place. Nelly is now the shape of an apple with little arms and legs sticking out – and is that a cherry on the top?

A wise woman once told me that I shouldn’t worry about putting on weight as a result of stopping smoking. She said that after about a year the weight would go down again. Oh God I hope she is right.

Then another wise woman told me that a menopausal woman turns into an apple with little arms and legs sticking out, and then she gets diabetes. Thanks for that Swisser.

Pig Abroad

This was my usual Monday, leisurely preparing supper for the fam. On the menu, a sort-of cassoulet - light on beans and for dessert, an apple crumble. A glut of tomatoes (thanks Clint) went into the stew and a present of Katy apples (thanks Howard) were used up in the crumble.

Then the dogs started to bark. A taxi-van pulled up to the door. The same taxi-van that I'd pranged the wing mirror. Who could it be? We weren't expecting anyone. The driver jumped out, the same pleasant bloke who'd got Zoe's surplus tomato plants. He looked slightly panicked. I went out to him.

Do you have a pig?

Indeed we do.

It's on the road!

Oh God! Bert! There's a pig on the road.

Bert set down his clarinet and I shouted to him

Bring an apple! We'll tempt it back up the lane.

What is it about apples and temptation?

The taxi driver drove off and parked his van at the mouth of the lane. And there was Rusty being 'kepped' by our neighbour Clare. There were several cars stopped in both directions but thankfully they couldn't see we feckless pig-owners because of the taxi-van. Of course, as soon as Rusty spotted the apple he was good to go and Bert placed him under shed arrest. As I expected, it was Bert to blame, He'd brought a load of timber in from the wood and forgot to close the gate. Probably going over a new clarinet tune in his head. 

We worked out that Rusty probably wanted into the hen run to guzzle up the windfall apples. When he couldn't get through the gate he must have wandered down the lane to see if he could find another opening. Pigs are like that. And apples are tempting. 

Adventures In Cider Making

At primary school one of the stories in our Wide Range Readers was Johnny Appleseed. As I remember, Johnny was presented as a jolly hobo who wandered the length and breadth of America with bags of apple seeds which he planted everywhere for no reason other than benevolence. And this is how Johnny Appleseed is generally known. I never gave him another thought until I read The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan.

Pollan's work shows how people and domesticated plants have formed mutually beneficial relationships. His chosen plants are the apple – our desire for sweetness, the tulip – for its beauty, marijuana – which intoxicates us and the potato which nourishes us. Each of these plants has thrived through selective breeding and genetic engineering. It was a fascinating read which I'd recommend to anyone who takes pleasure in growing – anything!

The section I enjoyed the most was the one on our desire for sweetness and apples. Pollan had a lot to say about Johnny Appleseed or, to give him his true name, John Chapman. The tale I had from school was over simplified. John Chapman was a fascinating man. But he didn't just wander around the United States planting seeds willy-nilly. He planted nurseries of apple saplings and sold them to farmers. When a nursery was established he left it in the hands of a manager and moved on, planted another nursery and continued in this pattern. He made a decent living. Now an interesting fact about apples is that they don't grow true from seed. Indeed, if you were to take an apple and plant the several seeds that it contained, each seedling would be entirely different from the others. And most would be sour. Apple trees that produce sweet fruit may only be propagated by grafting. So the vast majority of John Chapman's trees would have produced sour fruit. So why did people buy them in such large numbers? Because sour apples are just what is needed to produce hard cider and applejack. Our reading book never mentioned that.

Which brings me to my own recent experiment. I've been wanting Bert to make a cider press for ages but he has yet to get round to it. So I was rather pleased when a friend sent me a link to a method of producing cider without using a press. I gathered my apples, a mixture of Bramleys, crabs and dessert apples. Mostly Bramleys as they are what I have at hand. They are not ideal for cider but it is just an experiment.

The recipe uses a juicer instead of a press and we happen to have a sturdy masticating juicer which makes it easier still.

Hard Cider From Whole Apples

What You’ll Need:

• Apples, pears, or crab apples (to be mixed with sweet apples.)  About 15 lbs. of fruit gets us about a gallon of juice.  Must be fresh and organic.  Try to include some crab apples or tart apples with your sweet ones for a better, more balanced flavour.
• A juicer. 
• A chopping knife and cutting board.
• A large sieve and a clean kitchen towel.
• Demijohns, a funnel, a siphon hose, rubber bungs and airlocks.
• Sugar
• Swing-top bottles

Method:

1. Wash your fruit well with plain water. 
2. Cut your apples into quarters.  This is mostly just to check for bugs or other issues with the apples.  Discard or cut around any that have an infested core, and cut out major bruises. You don’t need to worry about coring or taking stems out– the juicer will do that for you.
3. Start juicing!  As your juicer pitcher gets full, pour it through a funnel into a sterilized demijohn.
4. Once you have juiced all of your fruit, taste the juice and add sugar.  At least a cup of sugar to a gallon of juice, more if you like sweet cider.  During the fermentation process, the yeast will eat the sugar (both the fructose from the fruit and the added sugar) and turn it into alcohol– so this step is both for flavour and alcohol level.  Those of you in the USA may not really need to add much sugar, as most of the apples there tend to be really sweet.  You can add more sugar later if the brew is turning out too dry or tart for your taste.
5. Put a rubber stopper and an airlock on your demijohn, and let it sit for a week.
6. Rack your cider– siphon it into another sterilized demijohn, leaving the yeasty sediment in the bottom of the first one, so you have a much cleaner cider in the new demijohn.  Taste it and see how it’s doing.  If it’s already tasting pretty dry, you can add some more sugar before you put the airlock back on.
7. For a sweet cider, bottle after a week. Three weeks or more makes a drier end product. Fermenting it this long means that it won’t be very fizzy in the end– but you can also add a little sugar just before bottling to regain some carbonation.  The next step is to bottle your hard cider.  Use the siphon hose to fill swing-top bottles. The type of bottle is really important, since it lets out small amounts of the pressure that builds up, so you don’t burst any bottles.

For those of you in Northern Ireland all the specialist equipment needed can be purchased at Hillstown Farm Shop near Ahoghill (and Randalstown) or Nature's Way in Belfast.