by Jamie on September 12, 2010
We’re now moving into a busy period with lots of harvesting to do and there are three events coming up which we will be attending.
First up is the Stoke Newington Common Fun Day on Sunday 19th September from 1-5pm. N16Mag has the info and it’s sounding great:
This year there will be lots of art and crafts activities for children, including making kites, decorating the fence, face painting, a dressing up corner… and more. There will also be lots of music, including B Block who started their career at Stoke Newington School (in the music (B) block ), the Beat Club, Homertones as well as local choirs, poets, dance, drum workshop,…
Other activities include a photography exhibition with historical and recent photographs of the area, green woodworking, Dr Bike and the very popular willow weaving. And of course there will also be plenty of savoury food (Moroccan, Indian, Halal, Turkish), and most importantly, cake
The Common looks great these days, thanks in great measure to the Stoke Newington Common Users Group. Let’s hope the weather’s OK. Should be a lot of fun.
We’ll be there with Transition Town Stoke Newington and we’ll be bringing the juicer along, so if you have a stack of apples that you don’t know what to do with then bring them along.
Then in October there are two more events – the 10/10/10 Global Work Party and the Growing Communties Apple Day. More info on both of these coming soon!
by Jamie on September 11, 2010
Good news out this week is that apple growers are saying that this is going to be the “tastiest crop for years” (“decades” if you read the Telegraph!):
Last winter’s cold spells meant that orchards lay dormant for longer, then the decent spring and early summer helped turn the higher amounts of starch into sugar. According to the English Apples and Pears trade association this year’s crop of apples might be smaller than usual but will be almost certainly tasty.
Adrian Barlow, chief executive of English Apples and Pears, which represents 400 growers across the country, said: “The winter and start of spring were very cold which gave orchards good dormancy. When the spring came it was a bit late and it warmed up very quickly. We also had some very good light levels which helped turn the starch to sugar.”
…
Jonathan Hoskyns, owner of the 65-acre North Perrott fruit farm in Somerset, said: “The size of the crop will be about the same as last year but the quality will be much better. Fruit growers like cold winters because it kills the bugs and makes the buds rest. Then the more sun we have during the summer the better flavour the apples will have.”
Good news!
by Jamie on September 2, 2010
A couple of us went to scout out some of the pear trees that we know about and found that they’ve still got a little way to go before they’ll be ready.
We’re therefore going to have to cancel the harvesting session this weekend. We’ll be back two weeks later when there should be plenty of ripe fruit.
by Jamie on August 27, 2010
This Saturday we had great success harvesting plums in the South East corner of Haggerston Park. This corner of the park contains a small patch of woodland with a load of plum trees (‘plum central’ as Nick calls it), along with a slightly unloved patch of land which is about to be transformed because the London Orchard Project is going to be planting an orchard there this year.
These were wild plums hanging in large numbers from quite spindly branches. This made harvesting quite easy – a tarp and a good shake meant that they were quite literally raining down on us:
The plums were at very different stages of ripeness, with some quite unripe and clinging tenaciously to the tree and others clearly past it. Being wild plums they were mostly small and tart but the ones with the most vibrant orange colour were perfect.
While one group harvested, another sorted through the plums, removing those that were too far gone and then sorting the remaining into different grades of ripeness:
At the end of the harvesting session we each took home a batch of plums for preparation. I’ve stewed mine down and will be using them to make a chutney once we have harvested some other fruits. I’ve spotted a great looking recipe which I can’t wait to cook up. Carina took her plums home and whipped up a crumble:
All in all it was a very successful first go at harvesting. The plums were a little fiddly to gather (not to mention process – stoning them was a labour of love), but we’re now moving into the pear and apple seasons so things will get a lot easier from now on in.
It was fitting that our first harvesting session happened right by the site where a brand new orchard will be growing this time next year. The London Orchard Project needs to raise funds to make this happen and has teamed up with a brand new crowd funding platform called Buzzbank which has been set up to support social and environmental projects.
The money raised will go towards planting the orchard and training up people to care for it along with other orchard and fruit tree related activities – all happening right here in Hackney. You can find out more and make a contribution by checking out this page.
by Jamie on August 16, 2010
Now that plums are very much in season, we’re going to be giving the harvesting a shot for the first time this weekend. It’s all very exciting and we don’t really know what to expect but it’s going to be fun finding out.
We have a selection of plum trees on our books which we’ll be investigating this week but as ever we’re keen to know If anyone out there has a tree with more fruit than they can handle – please let us know if this is the case and we’ll come and help out.
If you’re free and can lend a hand (and hopefully getting some fresh plums to take home) then come along to The Jolly Butchers on Stoke Newington High Street at 12 this Saturday.
Depending on the results of the harvest, we may have an ad hoc processing session on the Sunday but that’s still to be decided.
Find out how to get to the Jolly Butchers here:
