2021 Week 5 - Pruning and Zooming

You've got to retain a sense of humour.

Pruning Orchard Fruits
This week's big job has been pruning the fruit trees and bushes.

These two apple trees (a juicer and a cider apple) form part of the canopy in the new forest garden.
They've had a good haircut!

You leave stone fruits alone at this time of year, but the apples and pears needed their annual trim. Pruning is always presented as somewhat of a science and for several years I would accomplish the task with my trusty fruit growing book with me. Unfortunately the trees didn't always grow as they were supposed to in the book.

As I have gained experience, I have come to understand how trees and fruits respond to pruning. I have realised that pruning achieves various purposes. Firstly, there is pruning to take out damaged or diseased wood. Then there is taking out any branches which cross as the rubbing of the bark leaves a route in for infection. Once these fundamental steps are completed, there is pruning for the sake of producing fruit and pruning to keep the shape of the trees. 

As far as fruit production is concerned, I have realised that if you cut back the small side shoots they will eventually, over a year or two, turn into what we call fruiting spurs. To put it another way, what would have grown into branches is stopped and produces blossom and fruit instead. 

Pruning for shape is not just for aesthetics either. You need an open structure so that air can circulate and you need to make sure you can reach the fruit for harvest. Increasingly as our weather turns warmer and wetter fungal diseases are becoming the biggest problems, those and problems associated with alternative periods of drought and excessive rain, so thinning branches and thinning fruit has become more and more important.

This year I felt confident enough to show another couple how I prune. I concentrated on a holistic understanding of how the tree responds and what you want to achieve. I hope it was useful.

Pruning the Soft Fruit Bushes
All the soft fruit bushes needed pruning too, blackcurrants, red and white currants and gooseberries (a prickly subject!).

You need to understand how they fruit and how pruning affects new growth, but the principles are very similar to those that apply to apple trees. 

Fruit pruning days provide a very special treat for the Shetland sheep.
They really appreciate all the cuttings, even the spiky gooseberry twigs.

The soft fruits have been festooned with berries and currants for the last few years. New plants are ridiculously easy to propagate too. As a result, I've actually ended up with too many bushes which have expanded leaving no room to get between or for airflow. So this year I have pruned them quite heavily (pruning is not a science and subjective decisions need to be taken). I thinned out a few bushes too. The only problem with this is that the open ground becomes a haven for grass and weed growth. However, since I want this area to become part of my forest garden, I shall put smaller herbaceous perennials in the gaps which hopefully will require little attention and give us some novel crops.

Imbolc

The week's weather has been generally good, typically late January weather, some days cold, some warmer and wetter. The bees ventured out on a couple of days and I've heard robins, great tits, blackbirds, a song thrush and skylarks in song. This made pruning a pleasant task.

I've seen much talk of Imbolc on social media. It seems to have become very trendy to acknowledge these ancient festivals. Imbolc is allegedly a Gaelic festival to mark the start of spring. I am all in favour of appreciating and marking the passing of the seasons, but come on! I think it's a tad optimistic to be talking about the beginning of spring so early in February. There is sometimes a gap between reality and hope. 

One of my favourite plants at this time of year is mahonia or Oregon Grapes. Ours has split into two plants and become quite statuesque. It flowers and fruits really early and is an important food source for the bees when they venture out of their hives on warmer days.

I won't say that spring is quite here yet, but there are hints of its approach. To brighten things up in future, I had ordered a whole load of bulbs to go in the hazel coppice as I have now moved the strawberries on from that area. Hopefully they'll survive and we will have the delight of snowdrops, aconites and bluebells coming through. Planting them all was a lovely job to do with Sue and the dogs helped by enthusiastically digging up some lawn.

The garlic cloves I set in the ground a few weeks back have all come through strongly now. Once they get their roots in I'll take the netting off. The birds do like to tug at them though.

But the week ended with more heavy rain and the water has come higher than ever before. There comes a point when wellies become standard wear and you give up trying to go round the mud and puddles. 

Covid update

It's been my week to teach from home so I have almost no direct contact with the outside world. This makes me feel safe. School staff are now taking twice weekly lateral flow tests. These are notoriously unreliable but they do give a little reassurance despite being pretty uncomfortable to self-administer. We now look forward to gag-tastic Sundays and Wednesdays!

I also received an oximeter in the post. Both Sue and I have been feeling unusually breathless at times but the oximeter showed a normal oxygen level so I guess it must just come down to getting old and maybe carrying a bit too much weight around the middle (me, not Sue).

I received my Google timeline update too.

124 miles travelled in the whole month and never further than 8 miles from home. I think this was 6 trips to work, one drive out for fish and chips and one trip to the hardware store.

A sign of the times.

Unexpected Windfalls

Red Admirals are appreciating the fruity windfall too

So far this year we have had a winter with virtually no frost, we had about a foot of rain in 3 days and we had temperatures touching on 100F.

Every year has its variables but these weather extremes seem to be more and more frequent and each comes with its own challenges for growing food.

On this occasion it was strong winds that did the damage. Many plums and apples fell from the trees, but worse still was the damage to several of my plum trees. Our recent weather seems to be encouraging rapid, soft growth of new wood which does not stand up to the strong winds which often come in August when the trees are fully laden with leaves and fruits.
The trees which sustained the most damage were actually those which were not overburdened with fruit.

The damage did me one favour though. One of my plum trees went severely off piste a few years back. Basically the rootstock outgrew the grafted tree and we ended up with a huge tree which bore very little fruit. It looked good, but was growing fast and taking too much from the surrounding fruit trees.

Last week's winds literally split the trunk into four, so it was time to 'lightly prune'. Fortunately plum leaves and bark are a favourite for the Shetland sheep.

Fungal disaster avoided
Wet and warm weather is leading to more problems arising from fungal diseases. One of the plum trees in the chicken pen was absolutely dripping with fruits and I hadn't got round to thinning them adequately. Just as they were turning ripe, brown rot set in. Every fruit was rotting on the tree just as it was ripening. It looked as if we would lose the whole crop, as well as potentially infecting all the other plum trees.
I carefully picked every plum that was showing any signs of rot, often precariously balanced a the top of a step ladder, and removed every single trace of fruit from the ground. These weren't wasted, as the sheep very much appreciated them.
I have continued to remove any infected fruits and any that have dropped to the ground and disaster seems to have been averted.
Over the last few days Sue has picked a thousand plums off just one tree. It is still not empty.

Self-thinning Apple trees
We missed the June drop this year - this is when fruit trees often drop much of their fruit. in response to environmental stress. I didn't really keep on top of manually thinning the fruits either. This should really be done for several reasons. The branches can split under the strain of too much fruit; fewer large fruits are generally better than multiple dwarf fruits; thinning the fruit allows for improved air circulation.
The recent winds fixed the problem of not thinning though! Many apples came off, to the delight of the geese and sheep.

I Finally Got To An Apple Pressing Day

Saturday 13th October 2018
26 degrees! Holbeach is setting all-time temperature records yet again.
So far as rare birds are concerned, the weather patterns this autumn have meant one thing  - there haven't been any, which is a relief in a way since the car is poorly and might not make too many long journeys. It has also rendered my life somewhat more uncomplicated.

The reason I mention this is that for the last three years I have managed to miss the Smallholders Club Apple Pressing day. Not this year though. I actually managed to show my face.

One of the club members kindly opens up his orchard so even those without their own apples can pick their own windfalls. Others bring along apple presses and scratters (an apple crushing / chopping device).

The whole process was very friendly and many hands certainly made light work. In fact I spent most of my time chatting while Sue got on with turning our bagfuls of apples into delicious cartons of fresh juice. Even the apple pulp doesn't go to waste as the poultry very much appreciate it.

Under the blue skies it really was a very delightful day.

Equipment set up, windfalls collected

Apples going into the scratter

Fruit presses in action

Chickens on the prowl

While we were there we took up a friend's offer of some spare quinces he had along with a few bags of sweet chestnuts. It was lovely to visit his smallholding for the first time too. Like us he started with a blank canvas but his plot has been maturing and developing for a few years longer than ours.

Quince jelly on the boil

Asparagus put to bed

Saturday 13th January 2018
Sheep stuff
I was rudely awoken by Sue with the news that the three ewe lambs had pushed through the electric fence and got in with Rambo and the breeding ewes! Normally they go nowhere near the fence so I don't know if something spooked them. Luckily Rambo did not seem to be showing much interest.
The lambs were overdue their monthly worm treatment anyway, so we herded them all into sheep hurdles and got the syringe loaded up with the drench (oral medicine).

With that accomplished, we separated Rambo and led him up to the top paddock to spend the next few months with the other two ram lambs. So now all the girls are together and all the boys are together.

Asparagus put to bed
A rare dry couple of days and just about warm enough for the fingers not to go too numb.
Sitting on the to do list for a while now has been to clear the asparagus bed. The ferny tops had yellowed and dried out but needed chopping. This helps keep the asparagus beetle down. With the stems cleared away I could get to the weeds. Asparagus is an absolute pain to weed, as its fleshy roots run shallow. So it is a hands and knees job. I piled a good layer of sand and manure on the bed last year which helped inhibit the weeds and improve soil structure. Most of the weeds were easy to remove but couch grass roots had encroached from the edges and needed carefully forking and teasing out.
I then lightly turned the soil in the trenches and let the chickens in to pick out the slug eggs. Early in the spring, when the chickens have been banished from the veg plot, I'll mound up the ridges again and add more manure. There's no point doing it now as the chooks will just scratch it all over the place.

The chickens taking advantage of turned soil and doing me a favour too.

Even better, with the lengthening days they are starting to turn the extra protein into tasty eggs.

I didn't quite finish the whole asparagus bed but there's not much left to do. I had to call a slightly early end to the gardening today as the evening was set aside for a meal out with the Grow Your Own group. The Fens is a big place and we had a bit of a journey to The Lamb and Flag in Welney.
We had a lovely time and a very tasty meal (generous portions and they let me have custard and ice-cream with my bread and butter pud!)

Sunday 14th January 2018
Pruning the apples and pears
With the weather holding fine I decided to get all the apples and pears pruned. However much I read and watch videos, this is a job I am never quite sure if I am doing right. The trouble is that the trees don't often grow like they do in the books.
However, I've been doing it for a few years now so feel as if I am getting the hang of it.

I have to hold off on any stone fruits (plums, gages, damsons, cherries, apricots) for a while yet, until the sap is rising.

Let's hope the weather conspires for a good fruit harvest this year. Each year one crop or another catches a frost at the wrong time and one year I lost all the apples and pears to hail damage mid June. I'm not expecting that to happen again in a hurry.

Everyone's a Fruit and Nut Case

My one piece of advice to anyone setting up to be self-sufficient would be to plant fruit straight away, orchard trees, soft fruit bushes, nut trees and hedgerow fruit. It is an investment which takes a little while to start paying off, but it has rich rewards for the patient.

Our orchard is just starting to produce properly and can only go from strength to strength in the next few years. As summer gives way to autumn variety upon variety of apple comes ready, each with its own unique taste. There are pears and plums aplenty too, as well as more unusual fruits such as medlars. We have gradually added to the trees we first planted and will hopefully soon have an annual crop of apricots too.

All these, of course, can be bought in the shops (except maybe medlars), but some of the hedgerow plants I have planted are even more of a treat. Crab apples make a wonderful jelly, as well as being an excellent source of pectin when added into preserves.
And what about the elderberry - its flowers make an excellent cordial and an even better champagne, or let the berries ripen for one of the best wines. This year we harvested the berries (leaving plenty enough for the birds) to make pontack sauce. This old English recipe has enjoyed a recent revival, probably due to its inclusion in Hugh F-W's repertoire. It is a heady infusion of elderberries, vinegar and spices. The closest equivalent I can think of is Worcestershire Sauce. Pontack sauce stores indefinitely in the larder and develops its taste over the years, so Sue makes a big batch every few years. It adds an incredible richness and depth of flavour to meat dishes, particularly stews and casseroles.
Elders poke out from the edible hedgerows I have planted as well as being dotted all around the smallholding now. They are easy to propagate, grow well here and feed the wildlife as well as us.
Alongside them are blackthorn bushes with their yield of sloes. When you say sloes, most people instantly think of gin, but Sue prefers to add them to vodka. Once they have imparted their unique flavour to this beverage, the same berries are then used to make sloe port. Definitely a hedgerow fruit for the drinkers! We almost had a sloe disaster this year. After a blank year countrywide in 2016, our edible hedgerow has again failed to produce any sloes (or Mirabelles for that matter). I think I have been cutting it back too much in the winter and taking off the fruiting wood.
Sue's disappointment was tangible, but then I remembered that I had planted a few blackthorns in the woodland area which I have created. A closer inspection yielded several bushes laden with sloes ready to pick - a thorny job and it takes a while to fill a basket, but yesterday (edit - now a while ago as this post was superseded by other events) we collected 2kg of sloes, plenty enough for a lot of alcohol. They have gone into the freezer to simulate the frosts, as left on the trees the autumn thrushes would take them all before winter bites.

There are hawthorns and rowan berries too, though we don't have much use for them and leave them for the birds. Rosehips explode colourfully from the hedgerows too and every few years Sue makes a batch of rosehip syrup, a rich and sweet source of vitamin C. I actually grow plenty of rosa rugosa as its flowers brighten up the borders of the soft fruit area and it produces the plumpest, most vivid hips.




Back to the orchard fruits and damsons take centre stage. Our tree produced abundantly this year. They are a handsome looking fruit and handsome tasting too. All varieties of plum produce, in a good year, bountiful crops too much for simply eating the fruit straight. Pies, crumbles and jams go without saying, but Sue has had the dehydrator and the ice-cream maker busy too. Her plum yogurt ice-cream is delicious and dried fruits or fruit leathers make excellent healthy snacks for a hungry worker.






Finally there is the rather poshly named nuttery. The nut trees were an expensive investment when I planted them, as I opted for named varieties bred to produce fruits early in their lives. The almond tree has produced virtually since day one and the nuts taste delicious with that lovely marzipan kick of arsenic to them. The cobnuts are basically hazelnuts cultivated to produce larger kernels and these are producing more and more year on year. In contrast, the wild hazelnuts in the hedgerow and woodland will be keeping us waiting a good few more years before they even think about producing a nut.

Meet The Vinegar Mother

No, this post is not a Christmas attack on my relatives. Read on to find out.

Well it may have been the shortest day, but we seem to have got a lot done.
I've been taking advantage of the ridiculously mild weather to tidy up the veg patch. The main job has been to make a start on edging the beds - the grass encroaches more and more every year, but I'm determined to have everything looking spick and span by early spring. This is a big job though, so after each bit I do a quick other job - pulling up old vegetation, removing posts and wires, weeding, turning compost.
This way, lots gets done and I don't really notice how hard I'm working.

A nice crisp edge is very satisfying... but a lot of work to maintain

And when I'd finally put the chickens to bed and sat down to relax, what better thing to do than make the first slice into the Solstice cake.
It was delicious and will definitely become a tradition at Swallow Farm.

Meanwhile, in the house, Sue has been racking off the cider vinegar. This is the first time she has made this properly (though we have let cider turn to vinegar before). A couple of months ago Sue organised an Apple Day for the Smallholders Club. A big part of this was cider making and Sue brought home some of the apple pulp. Usually this would be a treat for the chickens or pigs, but this time Sue had other ideas. She covered it with water and left it in three large plastic boxes, covered with muslin to keep the fruit flies out.
After a while the entrance hallway was filled with a distinctive vinegary aroma. The developing vinegar grew a layer of white mould on top. This is supposed to happen. We were supposed to leave it there until March, but my winter squashes kept going mouldy until I figured that the fermenting vinegar might not be helping the situation.

So today Sue racked off the vinegar into demijohns. She filled almost nine! She has added a dollop of the mother of vinegar back in - this is that slimy white layer of mould! It is actually a form of cellulose and acetic acid bacteria. It's good for you. Honestly.

The 'Mother of Vinegar'

She has also added some apple pulp back in. The demijohns are not sealed, just covered, but they have moved to a different room.
Come March we should have 8 and a half gallons of very authentic apple cider vinegar.

And now the chickens can have the vinegary apple pulp mix. They love it and it's a very good natural wormer. It's also a bit of an all round tonic for them, which is just what they need on the shortest day.

News From Nowhere

I find the seasonal cycle reassuring. Like the sun coming up, there is a certain security knowing that winter will come again and spring will follow it. Each season holds its own wonders and challenges. Without them things would get monotonous. And as a smallholder, each time they come around I get another chance to try and improve on last year. Unfortunately I grow a year older too!

But this cycle doesn't make blogging easy! How do you write about your potato harvest for the fifth time in five years without getting repetitious? I find pulling potatoes from the ground just as amazing, every time I do it, but it's hard to get enthused about writing about it again. I guess I could always hope that no-one except me remembers the post from a year ago. For this reason, I don't always post about everything I do.

One thing which I do look forward to are the cider club days which Roger runs. The spring meeting fell through due to a last minute lack of apples, so it is now a full year since our last flow of apple juice. I don't see the group in between times, but I enjoy their company. They are a group of thinkers.

This last Saturday we gathered again under ominous skies.
The weather held for us, just, and as we chopped and scratted, pulverised, liquidised and pressed, it put me in mind of a book by William Morris, News From Nowhere, a utopian and nostalgic image of times gone by. (Alternative Title: An Epoch of Rest, Being Some Chapters From A Utopian Romance). It is one of the very, very few books to which I periodically return. In particular it reminded me of the community effort to gather in the hay. These days one man comes along with a massive combine harvester and creates a dust storm. Then, a couple of days later, someone else chugs up and down the field and the hay magically pops out the back in its shiny black plastic roll. It is called haylage these days. But in the past people came together. Undoubtedly it was hard work only made possible by a community effort, but it helped bond the community in a way which has now disappeared.

Anyway, back to the cider making. The beauty of the autumn cider day is that the apples are freshly picked. This year Roger had secured a new supply of mixed apples. Such a mix makes for the best juice and the best cider. He had also surprised us by procuring several boxes of mandarins.

These went straight into the shredder, peel and all and it wasn't long before the juice was flowing.

It tastes absolutely delicious as is, but we have put a good quantity away for when Sue gets time to turn it into wine. Now that's something we don't make every year.

The apple juice turned out equally delicious. We've now got three demijohns naturally fermenting. It won't be long before the bubbles start and the airlock valves start making mysterious noises in the kitchen. There's a demijohn unsealed too. This will turn itself into cider vinegar.

As for those changing seasons, we had the fire on last night. It was dark well before 8. And this morning I watched the swallows streaming across the fields. They are not 'our' swallows, for there are hundreds of them, occasionally accompanied by a handful of house martins. These have not yet chosen to adopt our farm as their summer home, so I see them only very rarely on such days when an exodus is in full swing.

I, on the other hand, will spend much of the winter snuggled up in front of my cosy fire with a glass of cider, or even mandarin wine.

And I'll be thinking of my friends. Thank you Roger.