Work session 25th October 2014

Another successful work session today, led by Claire McAllen. Thanks to Richard, Pete, Claire C, Damien and Charlie for coming along, it was a great turnout ensuring all the jobs got done. 

There was some construction work - a raised bed pre cut, drilled etc. by Claire McAllen for the two blueberry plants.  They need a bed all for themselves as they require ericacous compost and it is a task that we've not got round to all year - so great to have got them in the ground finally. Now they can properly spread their roots and get productive.

Before planting

 

After planting

Another long standing task was to put a support structure up for the raspberry canes that were planted in March.  This really shoud have been done before the canes went it, but we didn't have time or the people power to do it at that time... here are a couple of pictures of this work.

Raspberry canes and support structure

Claire tying the canes to the wire supports

During the session the apple and pear trees were given a fruit tree grease treatment to prevent codling moth and inevitably weeding was also done! 

Apple Day - 2014

We had a fabulous day last Saturday, with hundreds of people joining us to celebrate the apple harvest.  The sun even shone for us, which had looked unlikely as the sun came up.

Here are some photos from the day. A big thank you to everyone who helped on the day, baked cakes, made soup, designed bug trails, bought pizza ingredients, cleaned the pavilion, tidied up before hand and at the end of the day. A great voluntary effort from all. 

The day started with BBC Radio Manchester doing an outside broadcast from the allotments.

Some of the baking - which raised £140 pounds. 

Amongst the display we had Lord Derby apple muffins and Chocolate and Apple Cake and Grandpa Buxton apple pie made from cooking apples from the orchard.

 

Apple pressing, a highlight of the day.

 We gathered kilos of apples from plotholders on the allotments, and some fallers from the orchard to press.  We had queues of people wanting to taste and buy bottles of freshly juiced apples.

Lots of interest in the process of apple pressing. As the handle gets lower the children get stuck in too.

Pavillion begins to fill up with visitors

Pizzas from the cob oven sold out by the end of the day.

The pizza oven we have on site was built by plotholders at a cob oven building course in 2012. The course was funded by the grant we had from Local Food for Orchard49.  Its been such a fantastic resource. Thanks to all the hardworking pizza makers on the day.

We raised £276 on the day and all that money will be used to maintain and develop  Orchard49. Again, thanks to everyone who made it possible.