Tuesday, 12 November 2024
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.