It has been a mixed summer. Quite dry but not a huge amount of sunshine. Both our apple and honey crops have been reasonable. Everything has cropped late this year and the cider apples and later apple varieties are still being harvested.
We have been hugely thankful to family and friends and local supporters. Much of the apple juice process relies on bodies (unless you completely mechanize for thousands and thousands of pounds) to help with apple picking, apple washing, milling, pressing the pulp and tanking the apple juice prior to bottle filling and pasteurising. These helpers have made the harvest relatively easy this year and helped with various other projects.
We continued the bee experiences over the Summer which were extremely enjoyable (I think we just had one experience of an elusive queen) and these experiences ensure we are not complacent with our amazing honeybees.
We had tree work completed in our coppice by Hopwood Tree Surgeons who have made safe our historic Ash & Oak, we have had School groups and the Scouts to the Orchard as well as the Eventures (Home Schooling) families on three separate occasions.
We continue to relish the onset of Autumn and the literal ‘fruits of our labours’. We had the first good crop of ‘William Crumps’ apples (a Worcester Pearmain/Cox cross) which bode well for future years and the best year ever for our Pitmaston Pineapples.
We enjoyed our open day in the rain in early September. Well done to the brave souls who joined us and we look forward to the pre-Christmas stalls over the next couple of months. A good year through to harvest. Thankyou to all of Fruitfields supporters.
& we launched our Fruitfields cider. Check out our online shop!
Many of the pressing, milling & bottling crew 2021!
Bottle Filling
Bottle Levelling
Fruitfields honeybees loving the summer sun.
Glorious Egremont Russets.
Our Red Devils with dragonfly.
Capped frame of honey waiting to be extracted.
Honey frame uncapping.
Fruitfields honeybee swarm collecting.
Bottles!
The launch of our 500ml Fruitfields Cider bottle
Storage Creation Crew
Chief Panker
One of our Picking days, Autumn 2021
Ready for our Fruitfields Open Day, Autumn 2021
Greg & Sian, Mid-harvest at Tardebigge Cider, 2021
