Tuesday 13 November 2012

Make cider - meet interesting people!

Once again in passing... a site I've passed many times. This time I saw a guy on the drive that appeared attached to the land with the apple tree. Turns out he planted the site as he liked to make damson jam for his friends and included some apple trees. The one bearing fruit he thought was a Bramley, but on tasting didn't seem acidic enough, so I filled an onion sack as he said I could help myself. He then came across and suggested his neighbour across the road had trees and he would introduce me... I'd found a small bottle of cider in the car - probably destined for someone who hadn't been in - anyway, he seemed taken up with this and off we went... me pulling a kind of garden trailer he suggested I should take. Eventually a very old lady came to the door, and quickly established that I could have all the apples... First up a dual purpose very much like the first tree spotted over the road with far too many windfalls to collect... and more interestingly other trees still bearing fruit, with many windfalls in various states of decay and bird pecked. Noting four trees in all, with fruit needing panking I declared it better to return better equipped... meanwhile a carrier bag had been quickly filled. Back over the road, it transpired that the guy is a collector of vintage cars! Four, with another Bentley up on a ramp... one being a 1926 Buick -'straight out of Al Capone', he told me, and a 1500cc Riley (no modding allowed) that the guy had built from only the chassis (alu covered timber frame) and had been Hill Trialing in the Lake District only the week before!
In all 6 new trees and fruit to go back to...
I'd gone that way to pass the roadside crab that had provided so many last week - though short of bags, I was able to muster 2 carriers of the crabs (over 17 k)... after another few paying jobs (it was soon to get dark by now...) I called at the prolific sharp cropper to gain another 30k, so all in all a total of over 70 kilos to add to the stock.
I might get to 700 litres at this rate, though time is running out...

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