Friday 29 July 2016

The world's most expensive cherries?

I was delayed from attending the orchard site for a couple of weeks following a neck injury. When I finally arrived I discovered the cherry tree had been stripped of its crop. I presume the culprits were either blackbirds or pigeons.

It is a great pity because the crop had looked most promising a few weeks earlier. We were able to pick just five cherries last year and they were delicious. Given the investment and expenses of creating the orchard, each single cherry has cost me £5000 (five thousand British pounds).

Hopefully the economics will improve next year.

Monday 4 July 2016

Finally the gates are installed

After a lot of preparatory work the new gates to the Turnditch orchard have been installed at the roadside entrance.


While the gates are level there is a couple of inches height difference between the two gate posts. The posts installed by the management team are of course correctly aligned. The other post installed using the volunteer team, whilst being perfectly vertical, is slightly height deficient.;-)

Some work remains to add a small wooden gate to the stile. This will allow free access to people using the public footpath, but will prevent animals straying on to the road through the stile stone gap.