The orchard that we’re developing is on the outskirts of Nailsea, and is owned by Ashley.  There are plenty of old trees there which desperately need some TLC -pruning and ivy removing and the like.  There was also a number of fairly dead trees.

Ashley has removed a number of those old trees and we’ve been up and put in some new ones.  We have 5 new full standard trees which are 2 years old.  They already stand 12 feet or so, but it will be several years before they’re producing significant apples.  We’ve gone with several good vintage cider varieties, and some local too.  You don’t get much more local to us than “Backwell Red”.

After clearing the older deadish trees, Ashley had put in posts for fencing (there are sheep in the orchard) and dug a small hole for each tree.  We added a post for each to support it for the first couple of years, and then dug the hole bigger and deeper.  We plonked the tree in the hole and filled it up.

 

We connected the posts at the top and added fencing around them to protect from those sheep (and badgers).  Then we blessed each tree with some of our cider to ensure a good harvest – and we made sure that the cider was good enough for this.

And here’s the whole 3 hours compressed.