Funding - See above ! !
In addition, we had a successful afternoon at the Village fete, raising £50 towards general funds. Many thanks to Lorna Kay for providing us with cakes to sell (which were truly delicious - congrats to all who bought one!)
Churchend orchard
MORE GOOD NEWS ... - The Co-op have kindly given us a grant of £500 towards (in particular) creating the public pathway - espalier lined - through the Churchend Orchard. Thank you Co-op!
We can start work on this and on more planting soon, but the main effort at the moment is tied up with the fantastic apple harvest we have been discovering throughout the village - see below.
Workparties : Next official Churchend party is 01/10/11 10am
BUT things seem to be occurring most Saturdays, now - contact Kevin Dalby for more detail or use the contacts page.
We have bought and planted three fruit trees and a walnut tree - bit of a token gesture at the moment but couldn’t continue without something that we could call a tree! - Many more will be planted soon - once the apple harvest has been dealt with.
We have started to prepare the ground for planting, but it is hard going as we are finding a very, very stony layer just below the topsoil .
Apple Days
We have been asking people for support for Apple day in October, but the weather being as odd as it has been people are telling us that their apples are ready NOW. So we have had a couple of mini Apple days already to mop up these available crops, and to practise our procedures ahead of the BIG one!
These have been a great success - see the apple day page and photos - and we have already processed around 200 bottles of apple juice.
And there is more to come - another session will be occurring next Saturday (24/09/11).
At the moment we are borrowing what kit we can - and are indebted to Patrick French at William Morris house for the loan of his kitchen and all equipment on 28/8/11 and also to the Leonard Stanley Orchard Group for loan of their scratter last Saturday, and to Tim Potts for use of his premises and press.
We hope to get our own kit together eventually - we already have our own pasteurising ‘urn’ and various containers, but will probably need to continue to beg use of scratter and press for the time being.
See photos pages
