More home: food production 4

As you realise I love everything to do with this property, but my very favourite bit is the development of the extended fruit and nut orchard.

After I left the UK in 1997 I spent 20 years on the move every four years or so and lived only in rental properties (that’s a tale for another time maybe). During that time I set up veg and soft fruit gardens in some places - knowing I’d get returns before I left - but I never felt settled enough to plant trees of any sort.

As a result when I bought this property, and realised it was forever, one of the first things I planned was where to plant fruit and nut trees.

One of the things that had attracted me to the place was that there was a young fruit orchard planted in the paddock closest to the road.

There were apples, pears, cherries, apricots, peaches, nectarines and various plums. Initially I thought crops were guaranteed.

However I very soon realised that most of the trees had been ringbarked. Further research revealed that the previous owners had a goat and two sheep in that paddock: a disaster for the apple, cherry and pear trees in particular.

Additional issues were that everything was planted far too close together, the five apricot trees are the wrong variety for this climate and the peaches and nectarines all had leaf curl.

Over the first winter I removed a dozen trees, partly to thin it out and partly to remove dying or dead ones.

I was left with a depleted orchard, but at least the remaining trees had room to breathe and to spread their branches.

Then I identified two new areas for fruit trees and planted six apple trees, two pears, two peaches and an apricot.

In the interests of producing more protein-rich food I planted three hazelnut trees, to supplement the huge (and heavy-cropping) walnut already here.

This year I am getting the first harvests from some of the trees I’ve planted: what a treat. The hazelnuts will give me a grand total of 10 nuts! The main photo shows two nuts in close proximity to each other, just peeping out from their coverings.

The extra is part of today’s surprise harvest of Red Bartlett pears. I went up the slope to check the tree and found it completely bowed down under the weight of 18 large fruit, all of which were ready to pick. It’s an early crop.

Tomorrow will be the final day of the tour… prepare yourselves!