Harvesting

We didn’t take on a piece of agricultural land with the intention of intensively farming it for the production of massive crops, but have been surprised at how much we do manage to harvest from it. The orchard was primarily planted in order to provide fruit foods for wildlife (which it certainly does) but when the cropping is plentiful we also pick. We planted cherries, pears, quince, apples, grapes, damsons and plums. The latter provide our most reliable crops. We eat them, make juice with them and exchange them for other food items we don’t grow ourselves.

We also get quite a lot of fruit from the hedgerows – blackberries are very abundant so many happy hours are spent picking in late August and early September. We also get sloes, rosehips and crabapples.

The hazels we planted have been very slow to grow – probably because they prefer sandy soil to heavy clay. But in 2020 we got our first little crop of nuts. As with the orchard fruit though, we are keen to share with the wildlife so I expect the squirrels got more than we did !

We eat and use the fruit both fresh and cooked as well as producing yummy jam, jelly, syrups and gin !

Books we’ve used to give us ideas and recipes include Monica Askay & Tom Williamson’s ‘Orchard Recipes From Eastern England’, ‘The Brogdale Apple and Pear Recipe Book’, ‘Suffolk Farm Feasts’ published by Suffolk Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group, ‘Outback Cooking In The Camp Oven’ by J&R Absalom (invaluable if you want to cook up some kangaroo!), ‘The Campfire Cookbook’ compiled by Sharon Martin and Ray Mears & Gordon Hillman’s ‘Wild Food’.

We also harvest some of the willow we have planted. We do this annually in January/February and use the cut willow to make fences and baskets. We give some to friends to use – Lion makes the most beautiful ‘dream catchers’ which he sells at festivals to make some much needed income.