Whilst the rest of us have been finishing some of the winter jobs – pruning cherry trees, cutting firewood, and weeding gooseberries and raspberries. One of the hens has been working on her own project and just added 9 chicks to the flock….😳

Pods will be open soon – just a couple more weeks needed to finish clearing the pruning’s and let the orchard dry out a bit more. Then we look forward to welcoming back our glamping guests at the end of March.

At this time of year it’s busy in the orchard, we’re pruning all the cherry trees to keep them compact and healthy. Rob removes dead and damaged wood and any crossing branches, this opens the tree canopy, allowing light to get into the tree to make fruit growth and picking easier.

The raspberries and gooseberries are lovingly attended to by Eric, our fantastic friend and neighbour, 80 years old and with no plans to retire, he weeds by hand, prunes and ties the raspberry canes ready for this year’s fruit. He is also busy with his axe chopping old pallets into kindling for our glamping guests to use in their firepits! Eric returns in June to pick gooseberries for the shop, and we would be lost without him

Another big job is cutting firewood, in the winter logs fly out of the door, and in the summer our guests use cherry and apple wood in their firepits. We stock up using wood from the older fruit trees we lose each year.

Generally fruiting commercial trees have a lifespan of around 30 – 40 years, so we replenish rows of cherries as we need to.

We lost the oldest tree on the farm a couple of years ago – this was a ‘croon’ variety of cherry planted by Robs Grandfather in the 1930s. It was a huge tree, a pig to pick and the fruit was an old fashioned small and sour!! but we are very sentimental about it, and the stump stands proudly at the entrance to the farm. Some of the wood we’ve turned into bowls.

Cherry wood is beautiful to work with, and we have some talented friends and as well as Rob who make lovely pieces, bowls, knife handles, honey dippers and Christmas ornaments, there is an even a viola in production…

That’s our winter activity – next stop Spring, it’s only about 4/5 weeks until the orchard is in blossom.