BJJ News
By the star t of the Second World War, Coates was beginning to make a name nationally and sales rose in wartime due to beer rationing. The company expanded and by the 1960s Coates was exporting widely and buying apples from more than a thousand Somerset farmers. However, by the 1980s cider drinking had once again become less popular due to increased production and the better quality of wines from North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. The large brewing companies had concentrated on beers and had bought up a number of pubs and restaurants leading to control of sales. Nevertheless the tradition of cider apple growing in Somerset and Herefordshire continues and there has been a recent upsurge in cider drinking due to skilful advertising campaigns, particularly the Irish firm which produces Magners cider and, in the West Country, Thatchers Gold. There are hundreds of different varieties of apples and the Long Aston Research Station was responsible for helping to develop newer varieties. This is what stimulated Redvers Coate in his quest to develop cider making and shortly after the Second World War when the business was expanding he planted out an experimental orchard of 1,500 trees on a twenty acre site near his home in Abbots Leigh, Bristol. All of this history was unknown to me in the early part of this century when I retired from some of my orthopaedic practice. I was interested in purchasing woodland and in 2005, with the help of a legacy from my mother, the local land agent persuaded me that a fifteen acre cider orchard in Abbots Leigh would fulfil my ambitions. The trees, which had originally been half standard, had been allowed to grow and were now anything from 20ft up to 45ft. The orchard had been planted out by Redvers Coate as an experimental orchard in the spring of 1951. The rows were 36ft apart and the trees 18ft apart. There were eighteen different varieties of cider apple tree, four rows being the Ashton Brown Jersey apple which was developed at the Long Ashton Research Station. Thus began an ongoing ten-year romance with cider apples and the trees. The orchard year begins on 17thJanuary with the Wassailing Ceremony. The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon toast “waes hael” meaning “be thou in good health”. The Lord of the Manor would give food and drink to the peasants in exchange for their blessings and goodwill and the purpose of the ceremony was to awake the cider apple trees and scare away evil spirits to ensure a good harvest of fruit in the autumn. In addition to consuming quantities of cider and food, the ceremony also sometimes involved the firing of a 12-bore into the tree, something which has not occurred with my trees! The trees remain dormant throughout the winter and into the early spring. Replanting of new trees takes place in February or March. The leaves do not begin to appear until mid to late April and the blossom occurs in May, usually about the third week (Fig. 1) The 2014 season was unusual in that weather conditions were such that the blossom started in early May and continued throughout the month. This extended flowering season allowed the bees and other pollinating insects more time to do their work, resulting in a massive crop of fruit and an exceptional year for honey.
By mid-June I had taken off at least 150 lbs from three hives. For those readers who are not beekeepers I would normally get 20-30 lbs of honey from each hive by August or September. Throughout the summer there is little for the farmer to do other than to pray for sun and rain. Due to the relatively dry summer of 2014 and the exceptional activity of the bees, there was a massive crop of very small apples which did not start swelling until late in the season. It is normal for some of the smaller apples to drop in June or July allowing the trees to concentrate on the maturation of the remainder. The sheep are allowed to graze the orchard between April and September and act as fertilising lawnmowers (Fig. 2) Harvest comes in the autumn and by early September the apples are beginning to mature and starting to fall from the trees. By mid-October there is a carpet of apples on the ground (Fig. 3) and the first of two
Fig. 3 October apple carpet
Fig. 4 October apple harvest . Chris Ackroyd in control
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