Hurray , our winter gleaners are here !

It is always good to hear the chack chack of our winter visitors from Scandinavia and further East from Siberia . They are come to feast on the apples and Mervyn is here to ring them , weigh and measure and not their condition  – all useful information for the British Ornithological Trust.

Spring is round the corner

Wow ! So pleased to find such a large snakeskin in the garden.

Castle Fruit Farm High Spots in 2017.

  • Successful growing and harvesting season.Bumper crops thanks to our great team here and our summer family of harvest workers.
  • Richie and Claire have added a new Baby Bentley,baby Maddie to the team.
  • Having our work recognised by several awards this year.
  • Seeing signs of increasing diversity of natural life on the farm
  • Taking part in the Ledbury Food Group photo year project.
  • Working with our new partner Prima Fruit was a pleasure and a success for both parties

Challenges for 2018:

The impact of Brexit is still unclear both for our farm and all others who need seasonal labour. Listening to the current debate, not much has changed and there has been very little response from the government, who do not appear to understand the consequences to the rural economy, food security and the survival of our agricultural and horticultural sector.

  • Harvest seasonal labour is not an immigration issue! It is a result of Brexit.
  • Our thriving horticultural and agricultural businesses are an important part of the rural economy. If we no longer invest and disappear , the knock on effect on the rural economy would be significant.
  • Food security : the less we grow , the more we import and everything that means for all of us : prices, the satisfaction of knowing where our food comes from among many.
  • The answers are not mechanisation – this may help in the future but is not an answer to this issue now.
  • There will never be the numbers of skilled harvest workers available locally. The industry requires 1000s of workers  for intense seasonal work – this does not fit the profile of those seeking work in UK as it did in the past where mainly women and itinerant workers were our harvesters. All first world countries bring in seasonal labour to harvest their produce
  • Our conclusion is there is a clear need for the introduction of an updated Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme-and fast as the growing season is starting

As we put on another jumper or two (or three)it is concerning that our first workers of the season are rightly nowhere to be seen and yet in 3 weeks the first blossom should be appearing requiring that army of pollinators which starts the wonderful process of fruit development. Help ! Global weather patterns are different this year and we can only hope our vast numbers of hoverflies, bees, and other pollinators are going to come out of the woodwork and temperatures will rise.

Bentleys Fruit Farm Orchard Blossom

Bentleys Fruit Farm Orchard Blossom coming soon!

And so no doubt the challenges will continue in 2018 and we will endeavour to surmount them. Increasingly we are focussing on building the biodiversity on the farm with bug hotels, log piles, pollinator seed mixes, bird boxes and small mammal refuges.We must work with nature as it is our responsibility to hand on this orchard land in good heart to the next generation.

 

Harvest is over!

So harvest is over! Our summer family of pickers are mostly homeward bound after a very busy and lucrative time here. They go home to their communities hoping for good snow as many of them work in the ski business in the winter. They were a good crew and we hope we will see most of them next year. We are still waiting to hear what the procedure for bringing in harvest labour will be next season. All growers here totally rely on this labour – whatever high ideals there are about jobs for local people it is an entirely impractical and unrealistic suggestion. Of course, we could all stop growing and just import from Europe…..

The last Jazz and Braeburn were brought in last Friday. Then Bristol gleaners took a couple of tons away last week to distribute to Food Banks and through Fair Shares.

We now look forward to the next wave of gleaners: the thrushes, redwings and field fares will swoop noisily in,

chack chacking and clear every last bit of fruit from the trees and the ground and hopefully clearing away some bugs too. Amazing that our unpaid army of birds and pollinators together with soil, sun and rain plus some hard labour from us and this amazing crop is produced! We are but caretakers and our aim is to be sustainable commercially and environmentally so we were particularly proud to have our efforts recognised by FWAG which stands for  Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group.  Their mission is to “promote and enhance the conservation of wildlife, the environment and the landscape in relation to modern agricultural needs”. We won the Gloucestershire Silver Pintail Award  in recognition of our commitment to sustainable agricultural practices and wildlife protection”

We now go on to the Regional Barn Owl Award and are galvanised to put into action some more practices which will benefit biodiversity here in our orchards.

The big topic at this time of the harvest is why are there so many apples left on the trees? The main reason is lack of colour or that the fruit are too small or too large! Why does this matter? Well in spite of what we all say about not minding, we all choose the colourful apple and we are particular about size! It does not easily colour if the fruit is shaded, low on the tree or there is not enough sun, or the nights are not cold enough or the clone does not colour easily.As for size, it is hard to influence that except by judicial thinning and even that is not always with predictable results.

So enjoy the harvest! We are particularly enjoying Comice pears with Stilton Bassett Blue Cheese. I use apples everywhere – in salads, in with the sausages, chopped on porridge or cereals or stuffed and baked and popped in the microwave. Serve with custard or cream! Enjoy the harvest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Harvest is starting at Castle Fruit Farm. The Team arrives !

Here we are at the Cotswold Life Food and Drinks Award evening, having won the Drinks category with our fabulous Pear juice. A Great night out for  Michael and Chrissy , Claire and Richie , Clive and Angela

The year is flying by !
I am going to introduce you to our team. The weather, the pollinators, the condition of the trees are all important but above all it is our team that brings the orchards literally to fruition with great quality fruits which keeps us an economic thriving fruit farm. Small family farms like ours are under threat as the economies of scale favours much larger operations than Castle Fruit Farm but we hope that there will continue to be a place for orchards like ours in the rural economy.

Michael and Chrissy Bentley came to Castle Fruit farm in 2002 from an arable background. We were very ably supported by Clive Maile our Manager who has amassed a wealth of experience and knowledge over his 37 years on Castle Fruit Farm.  We have now been joined by son Richie ,  together with wife Claire and sons Oskar and Rudi who bring a great new energy to the farm !

The rest of the team is Nick , Mechanic, John  our longstanding semi retired tractor driver, Artur, our  senior tractor driver, Konrad our Field Foreman, Radek, Slavi and Arek. They are all hardworking young men from Poland who have been with us for some years. They are adept at all sorts of practical work and are not daunted by long hours when needed or working outside in all weathers.Field Foreman.

Nick , Artur and Slavi together with Asen Maya and Ivan from our Summer familyRadek

Come harvest time we welcome our Summer family of workers from Chepelare in Bulgaria . Chepelare is a ski area and so in winter many of them are involved in the ski resort : ski instructors, guides, ski room managers . It suits them therefore to come over here for our seasonal harvest work in Summer.  And we need them. As I explained in an earlier blog , harvest requires crucial timing and that may mean early start if the fruit is ready and the day hot as well as long hours to ensure our very precise daily orders are met. We would not find enough local people with transport who want the long hours of physical work outdoors just during the summer months. They work hard,  are skilled at the different aspects of the work, earn well and go home in the early Autumn. Long may this continue as harvest seasonal workers are vital to our and many other agricultural businesses.

Mira, Krassi and Eva our experienced summer team for thinning and harvesting

It is the start of July and the cherries are coming in thick and fast and amazingly the first Herman plums were harvested on July 4th and we had the honour of delivering the first English plums to Waitrose this season . The Opal plums are ripening and though smaller than usual because of the drought ,their flavour is more intense and I have already eaten too many….

Next blog will be recipe ideas for plums….barbecued, dipped in chocolate..

The rest of the team arrive this weekend and then harvest is truly underway. Look out for English fruit and remember that buying local keeps small family farms, rural businesses and our wonderful diversity of landscapes.

Pollination and the weather so far this season 2017

Bentleys Castle Fruit Farm Orchard Bee

Bentleys Castle Fruit Farm Orchard Bee at work

The magic of pollination has happened and we have a myriad of insects to thank and above all think about. Pollination is the transfer of pollen from the male anthers to the female stigma  which is essential to kick start cell division and set the fruit. Poor pollination leads to poor fruit set and yield and misshaped fruits, neither good news!

There are many insects that pollinate and to encourage large populations we need to provide sources of pollen and nectar right through from March until September. We must also provide habitat for all these pollinators nesting places and winter hideaways. All our non tree acres must be managed for these very important workers and here on Castle Fruit farm we are increasingly working to provide for them . We leave hedgerow margins, we don’t prune hedges every year, we are planting wild flower banks and keep as much brush, bramble thickets, dead trees and vegetation as possible . We mow every alternate alleyway to let flowers set seed and provide habitat. This is all a far cry from previous practice when farmers were urged to be tidy and cut and trim and spray  everything in sight.What ignorance and with what sad results. I was talking recently with a bee keeper and he was very clear there is overall much less forage for today’s bees. This is something we can all do something about : plant flowers, shrubs , trees wherever we can and be untidy where possible.

We have been working with Sam Ardin who is doing research into pollinators here at Castle Fruit Farm. She is comparing our pollinator populations with other farms and we are pleased to know we lead the field in numbers and varieties of pollinators. We have active populations of very effective pollinators such as leafcutter bees (left), some of the larger mining bees, left is the tawny mining bee, which was very active and some of the most effective hoverfly pollinators (two images below):

She was clear from her data that these contribute greatly to pollination in our orchards.We look forward to hearing more about these workers needs as we are keen to improve their habitat in any ways we can.

If you would like more information on Pollinators and other environmental issues a great website is :

http://www.cfeonline.org.uk/home/

In conclusion we are pleased we have had a good pollination and we have not suffered greatly from frosts. We are fortunate to have sloping land and the frost largely flows away. Rain and warmth have come and we are set for a slightly early season but then all these things can change overnight…

Who will Harvest our 2017 Crops

Who is going to harvest our fruit this year ?

Apple-picking

Apple-picking by Pat Strauss

Buds are breaking on the Valor plum trees and hurrah,the blackthorn  is in full blossom so the pollinators can get to work. These are our free workers so we try to make sure pollen is available early on by planting goat willow and keeping some of the hedges uncut for their early blossom.  More on the importance of biodiversity later as what is more pressing is organising our harvest workers. Like all farmers we rely on seasonal labour to harvest our crops. In our case this means a group of Bulgarians who come every year for 3-5 months. Who works here has recently become a topic of heated discussion as Brexit and immigration  hit the headlines. There are those who oppose this “immigration” and those who believe we should employ our local unemployed. The situation is not so simple and these are some of the issues as I see them.

Read More»

Winter work in the orchards

Winter Work : ” surely there is nothing to do now it’s winter ” How that makes Clive laugh !

One of the foremost things on our minds is :Tree planting. Orchards are being continually renewed, driven by age, unprofitability and the never ending desire of consumers for the new. It  is a necessary and  huge commitment in every way not just financial. The other tasks at this time of the year are pruning , machinery maintenance , coppicing, logging, ditching , hedge cutting and planning labour for next season, and on wet days catching up on research findings and never ending paperwork – deserves a blog on its own !

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Who are our winter visitors?

flown in from Scandinavia , mainly to eat grubs but also to feast on all our apples which we don’t harvest as imperfect in lots of ways – too small, too pale , ripe too late. All great for these feeding flocks of visitors who will entirely clear the fruit by spring. 

Mervyn is an accredited ringer and is monitoring migrant populations of Redwings, Field Fares and Thrushes. All his data goes to the British Ornithological Society . He sets his nets in which he drops a device which plays the call of a male Lithuanian Redwing and it certainly attracts the crowds. A quick weigh and examination follows and the birds fly off unharmed but ringed . Sometimes he catches ringed birds but more often not. More details will follow !

Summer Cocktail !

We have missed a trick !

Try one of Bentleys Apple Juices with a good slug of Bentleys Plum Delicious . Throw in the ice cubes and enjoy !

Bentleys Apple Juice with bottles

Bentleys Plum Delicious Plum Syrup with bottle

 

New Offer  on the farm until the end of June, one case (6 bottles 75cls ) of single variety Apple juice and a free bottle of Bentleys Plum Delicious!

Delicious treat on a cold evening.

Still cold evenings and room for a glass of wine and a cheeseboard accompanied by Bentleys Delicious Relish. Take your pick between Plum and Ginger, Plum and Cinnamon or Plum and Chilli.

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