Sunday 8 September 2024
Heading into autumn
Tuesday 7 May 2024
Spring blossom
Sunday 14 April 2024
April working party
Our regular task of flattening molehills was slightly less onerous than last month. Some sterling work was done pulling up suckers and another back breaking task, repairing stone walls, was attempted. Your scribe was reminded that he is a rubbish dry stone waller.
The pear trees are in full flower and there's plenty of buds showing on the apple trees.
Sunday 17 March 2024
March, and spring is (nearly) here
Monday 15 January 2024
January, and Wassail!
And, it being our January working party, the orchard was wassailed in the hope of a fruitful year!
Friday 24 November 2023
Autumn colours
Thursday 21 September 2023
Visitors from Nepal
We were recently delighted to welcome some visitors from Nepal. Both are farmers who work with a local charity to help remote malnourished people to grow their own crops. The charity is connected to the UK via PHASE Worldwide and people in our NHS to help support the health work in these remote populations. They may now consider growing apples, but altitude may be an issue! We wish them every success in their endeavours.
Monday 21 August 2023
Cutting back the shelter belt
Sunday 9 July 2023
High summer
Tuesday 23 May 2023
3-way Orchard Visit
Sunday 14 May 2023
Blossom in the orchard
Sunday 26 March 2023
Pruning complete!
Sunday 8 January 2023
The turn of the year...
And we're back in the orchard, busy pruning the apple trees; a hardy group turned up today, and we managed to prune a few more trees before the rain got too intense. Here's one we did earlier...
Monday 17 October 2022
Apple Day success!
A big thank you to everyone who supported our Apple Day event - whether by coming along, helping, making jams and chutney... whatever you did to support us, thank you!
Sunday 9 October 2022
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...
Sunday 24 July 2022
Tidying up behind the strimmers
A team turned out this morning to help rake up the grass cut yesterday, and to undertake a bit more strimming. No wonder the team are resting on their rakes, the compost bins are now full!
Saturday 23 July 2022
Three men went to mow, went to mow a meadow...
Our annual strimmer hire and onslaught on the grass started today. Three hardy souls turned up for a morning spent strimming which, along with efforts previously, saw the orchard grass cut. The taller grass seen at the top of the picture is the top of a reasonably steep bank closer to the bee hives, which is an area that we do not cut. Now to rake it all up...
Saturday 16 July 2022
Summer in the orchard
High summer in the orchard... and the grass needs cutting! We've also been busy summer pruning some of the more vigorous apple trees to constrain them slightly. This has included pruning out branches that cross over or rub, allowing more light into the trees so that the fruit can ripen.
Happily, there seems to be some fruit coming along nicely.Sunday 15 May 2022
Joint visit to Baslow and Bradwell orchards
The main orchard is arranged around an open space, with the trees grouped by fruiting time along one side and in the other two corners.
Sunday 8 May 2022
Thursday 5 May 2022
3 way orchard visit - 15th May
On Sunday, 15th May we'll be visiting Baslow Jubilee Community Orchard and Tideswell Community Orchard, before welcoming members of those groups to Bradwell Community Orchard. Members will be aware of this from recent e-mails, so please do get in touch if you'd like to join the visit.
Tuesday 12 April 2022
Sunday 9 January 2022
January - time to wassail!
Today's working party saw a hardy group of seven turn out to undertake some pruning. We also applied a grease band to all the trees to stop moth caterpillars climbing into the trees in the spring. And, as it was our January working party, we also wassailed the orchard in the hope and expectation that our labours will be fruitful.
Sunday 17 October 2021
Apple Day at Dick's Yard
Many thanks to all those that helped out in any way for yesterday’s Apple Day. It was a great success with lots of interest from villagers and visitors alike.
We made just over £170 from the sale of apples, jams, chutney, herb pots, delicious crumbles, tray bakes, cakes and the ever popular freshly pressed apple juice. Demand was so great that we had to go back to the orchard to pick even more apples for juicing.
We had a great display of many of the orchard apples thanks to all those that picked and stored the mountain of apples we harvested this year. There are still plenty of apples in the orchard which can be picked as they ripen in the coming weeks.
Many thanks again for everyone’s hard work.