We walked into the orchard and pessimistically surveyed the endless piles of dead brambles. The plan for today was to move all the piles to the end where it could all rot and leave us space to get on with planting. But the task before us seemed daunting, Olympian, even. Various methods were used to tackle the enormous heaps of lethally barbed brambles: some went for the rural pitchfork approach, bearing a bundle of brambles aloft, some piled them onto dumpy bags and dragged them, others cut up the brambles and put them into the dumpy bags, while the most ambitious heaped the brambles onto a large tarpaulin, enlisted the help of three others and carried it down to the pile at the end. The level of teamwork was impressive and by the end of the day, we had cleared all but the couple of piles at the gate end of the orchard. The difference was amazing. The sense of community was further enhanced by the lunch we all had together, centred around the table and chairs kindly brought for us by Marion. And we liked the fact that although he was not fit, Rod came anyway and gave us lots of moral support from the comfort of his chair. Just because you can’t work like a slave doesn’t mean you can’t be part of our community! The highlight of the lunch break was Malcolm’s joke – ‘What did the chicken say when it saw the duck about to cross the road? “Oh, I wouldn’t do that, mate. I did once, and have never heard the end of it.”!’ Altogether (despite the joke), it was a very satisfactory day. We had more people than ever who came to help, the weather was fabulous, and we ended up with a lovely clear area ready for planting and a beautiful wildlife habitat (not a giant heap of rubbish) at the end of our orchard. We now wonder what there is left to do (apart, obviously, from planting trees…). Jenny heartened us by recounting what fellow community orchard people had said during the visit to Tatnum Patch in Poole. They started their area nine years ago, but say that they are still battling against a relentless tide of brambles. So, still plenty to do for at least the next nine years, everyone…
Digging up trees – 3rd April
During the workday, we heard that there was an opportunity to get hold of some apple trees for the orchard. Dan, an old transition friend, has recently moved from his smallholding in Sydling St. Nicholas at extremely short notice. He had 140 five year old organically certified trees and needed to sell them quickly. He was offering them at a really good price….£5 a tree, but they needed to be dug up and transferred to their new homes as quickly as possible because this is not really the time of year to move trees. The site was due to be ploughed in a week’s time, so there was some urgency to get the trees out.
Initially we didn’t think that we could plant into the orchard because we had not worked out any kind of water collection device, and young trees need lots of water, so we began to plant them down at the farm. However, we made such good progress clearing the orchard yesterday, and the big yawning space we created seemed to cry out for trees. We visited a neighbour of the site who very kindly agreed to let us use their outside tap to fill the water butts we had on site. So the decision was made by those at the workday to go up to Sydling and get some trees for the orchard. Nine of us went up and spent an afternoon digging out trees, red and black currant bushes and rhubarb, and brought them back in our cars. We immediately planted them onto the orchard. There are nine different varieties, all local or traditional species. And now suddenly, from being a scrappy bit of land covered in piles of rubbish as it was yesterday morning, our orchard looks like an orchard!
Apples!!
