Pump up the bramley - sky lanterns, fire and elderflower champagne

Last weekend I had a party in the 1920s orchard at Charingworth. I invited the people I work with in the market garden and a few other friends and orchard helpers. Three of the guests were cider-makers so we were well supplied with cider and perry, and also got to try out my elderflower champagne for the first time. 'Too yeasty' is often the verdict with this kind of venture, but actually it was really good. Young, fresh, very fizzy and refreshing. A bit like me I hear you say? Ah gags!



A cheeky tribe of scrumpers, armed and dangerous! It takes some skill to get your face that muddy.

Orchards are great for camping as they never get too windy. I was pitched a little close to my hive of sleeping bees though.



It was the first time I had tried this back-to-nature minimalist fire pit design for the BBQ. It worked really well, and I would recommend aligning it with the direction of the prevailing wind to maximise air-flow. We cooked Cumberland sausages, burgers, and spicy 'Hungarian Hot Wax' peppers stuffed with coconut rice. Use British charcoal if you can - it burns so much better and the woodland management involved in producing it benefits many species. I like to think Ray Mears would have loved it, although someone brought tin foil and I know he hates that.


Everyone knows that there is nothing quite as entrancing as fire, and when you combine it with the gaping mouth of a drunken man it becomes a special pleasure.


No ultra-hip orchard knees-up would be complete without a sprinkling of sky lanterns (or should that be a twinkling?). I'm sure the NFU would have something to say about that, but apparently the wheat is not ripe enough to burn yet and life is too short anyway. Our ones didn't have any metal wire in them making them 100% biodegradable and safe for cows etc.

A Winnie the pooh daydream: bees, drones, queens and HONEY

My bee guru Tanya supervised another peek into my bee colony last week. This is the 'wild' colony that I managed to capture in my bait hive in the 1920s orchard. Since the colony is about to have a population explosion we added another story onto the hive (called a 'super') and hopefully it is from this that we will be able to harvest honey. And check out the suits...(could I bee any hotter?)!



Unfortunately to get into the hive we had to disturb this wild comb somewhat, but it provided the perfect opportunity to have a really nosey snoop around their magnificent wax world. You can see a cross-section through the brood comb and inside these cells are the white developing larvae. Along the top edge of the top photo the comb is for a different use - it has honey and pollen (the darker brown stuff) stored and this is both a food source for the workers and developing young. Do they have it on toast, you may well ask?


Look how delicately sculpted the cells are. This close up shows the sedimentation of pollen produced as different bees contribute their tiny parcels collected from a range of plants with different coloured pollen.


Whenever you open a hive and disturb the bees they tend to congregate and do this special nosier wing-fan action. This is their way of calling in any disorientated bees who have gotten lost or wandered off.


I know what you're thinking: who's this handsome lad? He's a male bee (or 'drone') and slightly larger than the female workers. A proportion of each colony is made out of drones (even though all of the workers are female) because no colony can reproduce without a fertilized queen. He was skulking on his own on one of the frames. Pull your wing out son and get pollinating!


We made some frames to go into the brood box and encourage the bees to build their comb on them. In this photo I am helping Tanya attach this wild comb onto a frame before returning it to the hive. Ideally we should have filled the box with frames very early on and then the bees would have had no choice but to build comb on them.

The advantage of the removable frame system is two-fold: Firstly, you can take them out to check up on their progress. Secondly, it is less energetically expensive for the bees to build comb on a frame with a sheet of wax that has the hexagonal cell pattern embossed into it (a 'foundation'). Wax takes about six times more energy than honey to make so this foundation reduces the amount of energy the bees spend on wax and thus they can produce more honey.


That metal grid thing is called a 'queen excluder'. It separates the brood box at the base with the 'super' above and has gaps that are just too narrow for the queens abdomen to fit through. This prevents her from laying eggs in the super, keeping it just for honey and pollen. Royal discrimination.


Picnicking with winnie the pooh? I got to take home some of the honey comb and it tasted goo-ood.

Inspecting the hives...I'm covered in bees!

At the end of April my beekeeping guru Tanya came over and helped me to install two bait hives, one in each orchard. The aim was to try and capture a wild colony when they start to swarm around this time of the year. It seemed like a real long shot, but amazingly I started to see bees going in and out of one of the hives about two weeks ago. So on Thursday evening we went back to have a peek at the colony and see how far they had got with their empire...


This is Tanya carefully lifting the lid on the hive in the 1920s orchard. That beautiful construction is wild bee comb and represents the natural form of a bee comb, the home of the colony. It is so pale because it has been made recently - over time apparently it will become browner with the build up of propolis. Unfortunately, comb like this is more tricky to manage than comb built on the removable frames you can see to the front of the hive. Ideally we would have filled the hive with these frames before they managed to build this natural comb and thus forced them to build on the frames. Still, what a wonder to behold!


Most commercial beekeepers would break up the natural comb into flat sections and attach it using string or elastic bands to the frames, thus allowing the colony to be managed much more easily. Since I don't have to be as efficient we decided on a compromise where we left the bulk of the natural comb but filled the rest of the hive with frames for them to move onto as the colony grows.


Here I am using the smoker to move the bees around and try and prevent any from being squashed. Smoke irritates them and they shy away from it. Amazingly, the bees didn't seem to get too bothered with our meddling and they didn't try and sting us. Phew!


We took a small piece of comb out to have a taste. The cells on one side are filled with nectar and the darker cells contain pollen which you can also eat. The bees have not yet started converting the nectar into honey. They do this by adding an enzyme and reducing the water content. This allows them to store energy supplies since honey will not ferment (it is in fact the only type of food that never goes off in pure form!). When the colony gets bigger I can add another story to the hive and sustainably harvest some honey periodically. We ate it with the first strawberries of the year. Very decadent!

1920s orchard in full spring glory

Before and after shots of the 1920s orchard. The 'after' photos were taken two weeks ago and the 'before shots in the winter of 2008. Fifty trees have been pruned, the grass has been cut and the birds are nesting all over the place.

Areas of long grass have been left to provide nectar sources and cover for birds and small mammals. In combination with the short grass this will provide some variety of habitat. Better air circulation will improve the health of the trees and reduce scab on the fruit. Mechanical mowing is a short term solution - in the long term we will hopefully fence the site and reinstate sheep grazing.

Preparing for the blossom...

After all the pruning activity of February and March, spring finally arrived and it was time to clear up the enormous volumes of prunings that had accumulated. Issac, Will and Freddie helped me spend a day consolidating the piles. Pruning offcuts are very sappy and extremely difficult to burn en masse. We decided the best option was to make several huge bonfires and leave the wood through summer to dry out before burning most of it. Any larger diameter pieces have already been stacked under each tree and on the orchard perimeter to slowly rot down.

In the middle of those two piles you can see one of the new trees I planted in March. This one is Ashmead's Kernel - an old Gloucestershire variety that makes excellent juice.

The exciting revelation of the tidy up was that for the first time we could see down the length of the avenues in the 1920s orchard. This photo was taken about a month ago and since then the grass has grown considerably. I have arranged for someone to come in with a topper and small cabin-less tractor and cut in on Saturday. After that I should have the photogenic combo of freshly cut grass and blossoming trees to spoil you with!

We also cleared out both of the barn owl boxes. I had seen the Jackdaws going into one of them, and it transpired that both boxes we full with sheep's wool and sticks from their nest-building attempts. Jackdaws fill the boxes with material and then build a nest right at the top. Barn owls will only ever colonise a box that is empty and they do not make a nest. I think it will be an ongoing task to keep them clear until they are colonised - but once barn owls are in residence they can use the same box year after year. I have also found this Jackdaw-proof owl box design which may be something to consider if you are thinking of installing one yourself...

It's spring and the birds are moving in...

Two hours ago I took this photo of a red kite flying over the 1940s orchard! What a sign of how successful the Chilterns re-introduction program has been. Indeed, whilst I was getting a bus to Gatwick airport last week I saw over fifteen of them when we passed down through Buckinghamshire towards London. In medieval times they were common in towns and cities where they fed on carrion and waste in the streets, rather like vultures do in other countries.


My funding has stretched further than anticipated and so I was able to direct Issac into the 1940s orchard for a spare day. Here he just concentrated in doing the chainsaw work I can't do on my own, such as raising the crowns and removing any large diseased branches. I saw a few yellowhammer down by the pheasant feeder where they always seem to hang out. It's a red list species due to recent population declines that are almost certainly due to the intensification of farming methods.



We have finished pruning the 1920s orchard now and its looking pretty amazing. The main job left is getting rid of the immense volumes of prunings that we have created. The offcuts are all very green and sappy and I have been agonising over the most efficient way of dealing with them. A mobile chipper is one option, but the prunings are quite hard to handle and I think the best option may be to make several large bonfires and leave the wood to season for five months before burning it all.

Planting vintage varieties

Yesterday I drove across to Drakes Broughton to visit Kevin at Walcot Organic Nursery and see if I could shark a few late trees to plant out. Finding fruit trees anywhere on proper standard rootstocks (i.e. M25) is quite difficult as more dwarfing forms tend to be preferred and are more convenient for a garden scale. Couple that with the fact that it's quite late in the year to be planting fruit trees and I was lucky they hadn't been completely cleaned out. I came away with an Ashmead's Kernel (Dave Kaspar's favourite) and the cider varieties Dabinett, Michelin and Tom Putt. I also got a crab apple as they are traditionally used to help improve pollination rates since they hold their blossom for a long time. I wanted to buy a few maidens to put in the ground this year and then by this time next year I will hopefully have fifty more trees of rare local varietes that I am grafting onto M25 next week. If you can't buy it, make it yourself.



The pruning is also going at a great pace - we now only have three trees to go before the 1920s orchard is completely pruned. (That's six years growth off fifty 90 year old Bramley apple trees.)


You can almost hear this old beast sucking in the fresh air!

38 trees pruned, 12 to go!

This sequence shows Isaac helping me tackle a tree that we thought was in danger of splitting down its trunk. It had become very spreading, with a large weight of wood a long way from the crown. The trunk appeared to have a clear weak point as well.


By bringing the arms in, the tree would be much less likely to split in two. Fortunately Issac is trained to undertake this kind of major surgery. It makes you think what would have been involved before the days of chainsaws!


On the right of this shot you can see the water shoots I have partially cut and bent down horizontally to grow out and eventually replace the branches we have removed. This technique seems rather brutal and may increase chances of infection at these wounds, but the trees are remarkably resilient and thus it is a risk worth taking.


Here is a tree we didn't get to in time to save. It is now supported by the ends of its spreading branches and will gradually decay. I plan to leave it in-situ as a habitat feature of these wood-pasture ecosystems.


The blue trees have been pruned by Issac and myself in the last few weeks. The five pink trees were pruned by my friends during the pruning party I hosted last weekend. The two yellow trees are standing dead or have split and will be left to decay gracefully.

Pruning party 2010

It was a question we had all been asking ourselves: what can a dozen people armed with saws do to an old orchard in a day? Will the outcome be disastrous? Can the ecological and horticultural aims be kept in balance? Will the cider kill the work ethic? Perhaps more than anything we were blessed by the weather on a day fine enough to inspire even the most dendrophobic Londoner into considering all those water shoots and congested crowns.


Teaching people about pruning is difficult, and especially so with the unusual situation at Charingworth. Here Bramley apple trees on vigorous rootstocks have been commercially managed for over 70 years. We are now attempting to ease them into a less intensive management regime, whilst at the same time preserving all the valuable types of habitat that orchards can accumulate over time.


I started my friends off on a couple of trees I had already half-pruned. This eased them into the basics of dealing with the water shoots without too many confusing or important decisions to make.


The basic message was: clear the crown and lower branches from water shoots and then thin the majority of the rest, choosing a few well positioned shoots to take the vigour. Remove anything crossing or pointing back in. Easy, breezy, beautiful.


I was lucky to have Harry and Tommy back from the pruning weekend last year. It looks like Harry is giving some advice to Luca in this photo - knowledge sharing for fruit bearing!




We brought a load of well seasoned wood into the orchard to try and create a fire ferocious enough to consume the piles of sappy offcuts that have been created. I think the only workable solution will be to hire a mobile chipper for a day once the pruning is finished.


A "Blitzkrieg" campaign on tree 31.




I picked up twenty litres of medium sweet Prior's Tipple cider to keep the mood buoyant. Alongside hot Cumberland sausages with mustard and onion marmalade, this made for an idyllic lunch amongst the trees.








By the end of the day we had pruned five trees (shown here in pink). This was more than I had hoped for and it was so thrilling that everyone seemed to really get into it. This takes the total up to 27, which is over half way!

More importantly it allowed a few people to experience the beauty of old orchards first-hand. There is nothing quite like sitting in the arms of a pruned apple tree with a glass of cider to allow communion with, in James Russell's words, that "man-made Eden".