Year 5- the orchard is growing up
This year has been a good one cider-wise, 2018's hot summer meant loads of concentrated sugar in the juice producing strong, flavour-packed cider that went down very well. The Nobody Inn, The Cridford Inn, The Real Al Company and Ye Olde Cider Bar have been great to me this year with a few other pubs taking some boxes here and there. I'm still struggling to get much traction in London but working on it. The orchard is coming on great guns, I've now got 22 apple trees between 10 and one year old. The older ones are growing strongly, pretty much proper sized trees now, I remember planting them when they were smaller than me. It was great this autumn to get a proper harvest of apples that made a real contribution to the total haul alongside various old orchards in the local area. It should also mean that next year, weather permitting, I can start to experiment with single variety and specific blends rather than doing everything by taste from unknown apples as I do now.