Cider Blogs and Tags

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Cider Blogs

I do wonder why we are not seeing very many cider blogs at all yet. To me it seems the arguments for any small business or serious hobbyist publishing a blog are compelling. At least somebody at Westons or Thatchers might be blogging by now? What better way to share the ups and downs of cidermaking, orchard management, pictures and illustration and anything else the cidermaker wants to write about.

Here are some good reasons to start a ciidermaking blog:

EASY It's almost as easy as writing an email and snding it to ukcider
CHEAP/FREE You can get a free blog for yourself at one of many providers such as blogger.com or wordpress,org and not have to worry about hosting charges or increasing bandwidth
CONVERSATION Because blogs allow for comments, you can make contacts, friends and learn from pointers that your audience sends in.
INSIGHT into the market through engagement with potential customers
GOOGLE loves blogs, building your visibility and traffic

And to dispel some myths:

Technology

Blogging at it's simplest doesn't require any technical knowhow. It's as easy as posting a webmail or bulletin board. You could even compose your entry first in a Word processor and then paste it in if you like.

Keeping it up

You don't have to write something every day as some people believe ( perhaps after having started diaries as teenagers and then shortly abandoned them? ) Once a week or month would still have a big impact compared to a static "homepage" type site which nobody can interact with.

The rest of this page is for rendering RSS feeds from those cider blogs which do exist.

For example

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Torkard Cider

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Rockingham Forest Cider

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Fruitwise

Fruitwise Heritage Apples

Cider and perry video

Just found (via the ukcider Google group) a very nice short film on Myspace about cider and perry, enjoy. http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=40691513

I am currently about 2 thirds of the way through building an apple store, too busy to blog much but hope to start putting up a photo and some text on the 'Apple of the week' as we go through the English apple season.

PS sorry we have had to put our prices up after keeping them static for 3 years, our production and insurance costs (yes, we have to have £3million public liabilty insurance to be allowed to sell apples!) have risen considerably, so we are now selling at £3 a kilo, but that's still not bad compared to globalised commodity supermarket apples.

Fruitwise apple sales 2008

Welcome to the blog and website of the Fruitwise Heritage Apple company (i.e. Stephen and Julia Hayes's hobby apple farm!) To enter the main site, click on http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html

This is the current list of Fruitwise Heritage Apples sales for 2008. All events are Farmer?s Markets unless stated otherwise. For details of Hampshire Farmer?s Markets check out http://www.hampshirefarmersmarkets.co.uk/

Details of Fareham markets which are not run by Hampshire CC can be found on http://www.fareham.gov.uk/business_and_economy/town_centre/markets/intro.aspx and for information about Apple Day, view http://www.commonground.org.uk/appleday/index.html

Please note there are 2 sales at different locations on Saturday 11th September.

August

Sunday 10^th Winchester 9-14.00

Saturday 30^th Cosham 10-14.00

Sunday 31^st Winchester 9-14.00

September

Saturday 6^th Fareham 9-14.00

Sunday 14^th Winchester 9-14.00

Saturday 20th Alton 10-14.00

Saturday 27^th Damerham Apple Day, Damerham Village Hall, 12-16.00

Saturday 28^th Winchester 9-14.00

October

Saturday 4^th Fareham 9-14.00

Saturday 11^th Ringwood Farmer?s Market 10-14.00

Saturday 11^th Netley Autumn and Pumpkin Fair, Victoria park, Netley (details to be confirmed, search on key words)

Sunday 12^th Winchester 9-14.00

Saturday 18^th Fruitwise Apple Day 10.30-15.00, Durley Memorial Hall, Durley.

Saturday 25^th Cosham 10-14.00

Sunday 26^th Winchester 9-14.00

November

Saturday 1^st Fareham 9-14.00

Sunday 9^th Winchester 9-14.00

Saturday 15^th Alton 10-14.00

Saturday 29th Cosham 10-14.00

Sunday 30^th Winchester 9-14.00

December

Saturday 6^th Fareham 9-14.00

Sunday 14^th Winchester 9-14.00

Other events will be added if they occur. It looks as if these events will probably sell out our prospective 2008 apples, allowing for a few private sales, but if we find we have a better than expected crop of our longer keeping varieties, there may be a few additional late winter sales (e.g. early 2009). We will keep you informed.

Stephen Hayes

3^rd August 2008

The apple season has begun

Hi everyone. Julia went to the first Fruitwise farmer's market of the year yesterday at Fareham, with James Grieve (picked early for cooking, they ripen to eat raw later) and 4 boxes of Miller's Seedling. This apple is one I tracked down (with difficulty, its now extremely rare) after reading a book 'New Forest Orchard' by Hugh Quigley, which is a whimsical and slightly melancholy story about a succesful indistrialist who wanted a change planted a new orchard. Miller's Seedling features heavily in the book and was highly praised, which led to me tracking down a specimen from Keeper's nursery in Kent, which I grafted. That was 20 yearsa ago, Keeper's is still trading under different management but still very good-check their web site for its excellent fruit information. We got a rare pear, Seckle, from them last winter. It's not the most highly flavoured apple, but very sweet, juicy and nice in it's short and very early season.

Now that the global apple trade has turned apples into a year round commodity, we have lost the habit if anticipating and appreciating the first early early apples as they ripen in late summer, and the supermarkets won't stock them due to short shelf life. As the global energy crisis develops and the cost (both carbon and ecomonic) of refrigerated transport and storage rises, we may be forced to grow locally and consume seasonally once again, another reason why the genes of these rare old apples MUST be presenved.

I will shortly put up this year's farmers market dates in full, I may also change the format of the site, since free blogging has come on so much now and it may be more expedient for me to put up a freestanding blog which links here. Anyhow, I hope to see some of our old friends at the Farmer's markets. Apple crop this year looks good, a relief after the watery disaster of 2007. The Orleans Reinettes in particular look stunning, great to see after 95% loss of this variety last year due to them cracking and bursting due to the excess of rainwater. If this weather carries on -decent mix of sun and rain with no real extremes-it could be our best season yet for quality as well as volume. Sadly no plums this year though due to rotten weather at blossom time.

enter the main site on http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html

Summer pruning video

http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html

hope this link works, its time to do summer pruning if your trees need it, the benefits are more air and light through the tree and better coloured apples. Don't overdo it.

nice new web site

http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html

I recently found this nice web site, orangepippin.com. The link below takes you to an item about apple research at East Malling. One thing we really need os new apple varieties with natural resistance to pests and diseases. It is unlikely that it will ever be possible to dispense with pesticides altogether, since customers will not accept spotty or maggoty fruit. Such research can only really be done by charities or government, since the industry won't make enough money out of it.

Long live East Malling!

http://www.orangepippin.com/east_malling_research.aspx

grafting apples March 2008

http://www.youtube.com/v/7UC5Dr3tWDc http://www.youtube.com/v/7UC5Dr3tWDc

Here (click on the above link, I hope it works!) is a short video tutorial about saddle grafting, a very easy technique to acquire with a little practice which can enable you to raise your own apple trees or graft over established trees to a differnet variety.

Smile, it's springtime!

Early spring coming?

There are a good few snowdrops plus some primroses out, mainly in woodland edge and hedgerow shelter. Some of the sloe buds are just swelling and will be blossoming probably in very early March.. Seeing these very early flowers is one of the benefits of working outdoors in the orchard.

We are making some progress digging out the Bramleys to make space for pears, I have put something up on youtube about it. Having recently discovere youtube and had some positive comments and a fair number of viewers, I thought I would presume to put up an orchard diary with short films from the orchard to chart the seasons. I'll put up a short film of buzzards next, then hopefully when we plant the pears. Looking forward to blossom time, only 10 weeks or so to go, God willing.

winter work and harvest hopes

http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html

Just done a little tidying up of the main site, corrected a few typos, added some text and put up a link to the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, a major omission corrected. We have booked more farmers markets for 2008 than last year, details will go up soon. I have nearly finished pruning the trees, there is a tremendous amount of fruit bud and the trees grew well in 2007, so we should have the biggest crop ever. The weight and quality were down last year due to the awful weather, but given an average year for 2008, we could easily get 12 tons. Even last year, in addition to the fruit spoiled by waterlogging and fungal disease, we lost about 2 tons of fruit, mainly Lord Lambourne, Kidd's Orange Red and Winter King, that could have been sold, because we just couldn't find time to get to enough markets. This was mainly to do with the fact that we are part time farmers with other responsibilities which we can't always control. We are planning harder for the coming year, learning the lessons where we can.

Julia and I will divide our forces and I'll take the family esate car while she takes the van when there are 2 markets on the same day, e.g. Alton and Southsea or whatever. I'm also hoping to start taking our apples to the Saturday market at Sunnyfields, not been yet. We'll go to Winchester markets together as it's so hectic there.

We are arranging a couple of Saturday work parties in February for friends of the orchard to clear the prunings. We are also, sadly but necessarily, going to remove 24 large but unprofitable Bramleys. They have grown out of control and fruit poorly, they are just too vigorous to manage. The soil in our orchard is very patchy, but these extremely vigorous trees by chance just seem to be in a very good bit, and all they do is grow , grow and not fruit much. Its a shame to cut down a growing tree but as my brother in law Bob, who works with a firm of receivers says, 'if you lost £8 down a drain would throwing £5 down after it make things better?'

We keep getting asked for pears, and it just so happens that a few espalier pears we grow for ourselves a few yards away are now doing pretty well. The excellent soil these Bramleys are unproductively using should grow pears excellently. We will probably go for 36 dwarf bush pears in all, half Conference for reliability, plus a few Beth, Concorde and Comice. We have a few rare varieties for ourselves, these ones will be purely for sale so we won't get involved in the rare old variety thing with pears as we have with apples, there is a limit!

You have less time to choose, buy and plant new fruit trees before the spring than you had when I mentioned it last, and a trip to a few nursery web sites today (see links inside the main site) are sold out of some varieties already, so do hurry or you'll have to wait another year.

http://www.fruitwise.net/menu.html

Grafting apple trees

It is time to be thinking about planting new trees or maybe even grafting over old trees to different varieties. Its not difficult. If you have an established apple tree in your garden but are unhappy with the variety, you can graft it over using simple techniques and no equipment other than saw and sharp knife , plus a bit of polythene tape (you can cut some from a freezer bag) and some scion wood from the new variety you want to graft in. I will put some videos on YouTube soon about how to do it, its too early to graft yet but not too soon to plan. You need to obtain the scion wood soon while still dormant, pencil sized and shaped 2007 growth, and keep it cool and moist until you graft in early spring.

The above picture was takaen in southern France and chows a very uniform orchard where the trees have been rafted over to a different variety.

Apple tree beauty on youtube-go see

As I mentioned, I have just put up 4 video turorials on pruning apple trees, which you can find by going to http://www.youtube.com and putting Fruitwise into the search box. I hope to put up more through 2008 as a teaching resource and to celebrate orchards-why not do the same if you can-it's free.

While wandering round youtube, and of course there is a lot of rubbish, and much schoolboy wanabbee guitar hero bedroom/study material(guilty, your honour), but there is also some really nice material. I particularly commend this splendid orchard video with the reading of a poem 'The old apple tree'. Do yourself a favour and click on the link below and watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m84np4gKHHE&feature=related

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Cider with Penny

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The Cider Shed

http://www.thorogoods.com.au/blog

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Cassels Cider

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ukcider blog

ukcider

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Lyne Down Cider: Thanks to Mark Shirley for sending in a link to this short video which provides a nice tour of the Lyne Down Cider and Perry Limited products and organic orchard. Apple varieties mentioned are Stoke Red, Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill, Dabinet and Katy. Also a view of the twin screw press. Share This
Summer pruning in the apple orchard: Are you keeping up to date with Stephen Hayes’ Fruitwise apple tree pruning Videos? This latest one is all about summer pruning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pReVULvggJE Summer pruning is a discretionary activity for orchard keepers, so you have to decide if it’s needed or not. Where a tree puts on a lot of new growth, then it’s worth thinning it out [...]
Who are the Responsible Drinkers Alliance ?: “Lucy Mcs” dropped by the Cider Facebook Page to leave a message about The Responsible Drinkers Allowance which I’ll publish here without any endorsement, as a means of perhaps gathering further opinion on the subject. In particular I’d welcome any research which can establish whether this is a genuine grassroots campaign or a front [...]
Bath and West Show - Cider and perry results: Here are some reported results from the Bath and West show. Class 1 Sweet Cider 1st Burrow Hill 2nd Cornish Cyder farm, 3rd Gaymers Class 2 Medium Cider 1st Glastonbury abbey estate, 2nd Burrow Hill, 3rd Andrew Lea Class 3 Dry Cider 1st Andrew Lea, 2nd Cornish Cyder farm, 3rd Perry’s Class 4 Organic Cider 1st David Sheppy, 2nd Westons Class 5 - 2 bottles of cider retail 1st Perry’s 2nd Welsh [...]
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Hereford International Cider Competition Results: Hereford International Cider Competition Results from the Cider Museum. The judges were Geoff Morris of Orchard Hive and Vine, David Sheppy of Sheppy’s Cider, and Patrick Shave of the Hop Pocket Wine Co. Dry Cider 1. Once Upon a Tree, Putley 2. Thatchers Cider Sandford 3. Wrenbury Cider, Nantwich, Cheshire Medium Cider 1. Once Upon a Tree, Putley 2. Thatchers Cider Sandford 3. Burrow [...]
Steam and Cider at Barrow Hill: Anyone living in the North with nowt to do next weekend (May 16th and 17th 2008) could do a lot worse than pay a visit to the Barrow Hill Roundhouse Beer and Cider “Rail Ale” Festival. It’s held in the old locomotive roundhouse and you can sup some good ciders & perries [...]
subscribe to ukcider discussion group: The UKcider online discussion group has been going since 1999 and provides a social space where cider related topics can be aired and debated. There’s also room for news and events, problems and advice as well as plain friendly banter and socialising. Not just for cider makers, but all enthusiasts of the apple and pear [...]

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Cider Blogs and Tags

From Ukcider

Contents

Cider Blogs

Torkard Cider

Torkard Cider

Rockingham Forest Cider

Rockingham Forest Cider

Fruitwise

Fruitwise Heritage Apples

Cider with Penny

Cider with Penny

The Cider Shed

Del.icio.us Tag cider

Delicious/tag/cider

Cassels Cider

CasselsCider

ukcider blog

ukcider

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