An apple a day

One of the consequences of the reduction in casual labour on farms is that many of the smaller jobs and, in particular, the manual jobs don't get done. This is partly the result of the intensification of agriculture and the need to justify all labour costs in a manner that satisfies the adviser, the accountant and the bank manager, but it is also the result of the reluctance of many of those who work on farms to do the manual jobs such as cleaning out the drain that cannot be reached by the swing shovel. Part of the excitement for young employees is the opportunity to drive 'boys toys' which they do largely pretty efficiently, if too fast, on country lanes. It is hard enough to sell the idea of an agricultural career to schoolchildren. It won't be made easier by telling them that they will be cleaning out the pig sheds by hand.
One of the jobs that used to be done on a mixed Devon farm was pruning the apple trees in the orchards. In recent years it isn't only this job that hasn't been done, it is even the picking or collecting of the apples themselves that has been ignored as the apples fall and the ground around the trees seethes in a wasp frenzy. Collecting apples has either not proved profitable enough or, because picking in orchards is increasingly mechanised, the appropriate machinery has not been available at the right price for the small scale producer to make it worth their while.

One of few blossoms this year

Last year, unable to bear the waste, I borrowed some big bags that my neighbour uses to collect his apples. He is a man in his 70s, used to hard work and to making the most of his resources and not afraid of a bit of hard work himself. He takes his apples in by the trailer load and is fortunate to have an outlet locally where he sells them by the tonne.
 I filled the bags and took them to our local town where we didn't just sell the apples, we had some of them them (the cider apples!) made into cider, others into fruit juice and some went into the freezer.The cider's good and we will be drinking it at my son's wedding in a few weeks time.
This year however the trees are bare. Very few of them, in the atrocious weather conditions, have produced fruit at all and those apples that have appeared look more like green maltesers they are so small.

Cider orchard in winter

One or two trees are doing well however.This is the advantage of having an orchard with a mixture of varieties to deal with the vicissitudes of the seasons; of temperature, rainfall, flowering and pollination. Modern commercial growers, faced with the stringent demands of the supermarkets and their buying public who they don't bother to educate about varieties or blemishes and needing to mechanise and standardise don't have this option. A rise in price won't help them if they don't have any and in a world market there are plenty that will have them. Buy British will sound a bit hollow.
Our orchards are not going to be much of a commercial asset this year but they are an environmental oasis. Whether it is lichen, butterflies, birds, flowers or bees; they play an important role in this special part of Devon