We sat down with Bert to ask him a few questions about the tree planting project
Why did you start tree planting?
As we travelled, picking fruit from traditional orchards, we noticed the wildlife that thrives in these places and met old characters with snippets of knowledge about the old ways of growing fruit. We couldn’t help but notice many of these last traditional orchards were in a sorry state with haggard trees on their last legs soon to be lost forever.
There is never just one reason to plant a tree and the same goes for our tree plantings. We want to bring back a way of farming that creates habitats for wildlife while making farms more sustainable by creating shelter for livestock and reducing soil erosion whilst making land more resistant to drought.
We want to preserve heritage fruit varieties that are no longer of interest to large commercial growers but make the most fantastic preserves. We want to provide communities with access to these wonderful old varieties of fruit.
2. Why is it important to you that these varieties don’t get lost?
The orchards and hedgerows that these varieties make up, sustained our ancestors and are a symbolic connection to historic traditions and folklore. They are a vital way of keeping our heritage alive, educating people about local food and most importantly creating habitats for wildlife and increasing our land’s biodiversity.
3. What is the long term goal?
We believe valuable fruit can be grown alongside main crops or livestock, in hedgerows and small-scale traditional orchards. The rich habitats generated by productive orchards and hedgerows create food and refuge for the entire wild food chain. Diverse farms are more resilient economically and ecologically. We often forget that our capitalist system relies solely on the abundance of nature, which must be preserved so that humans can thrive.
In the long term we hope to partner with growers interested in regenerative farming and agroforestry systems like I have described above. This year we have made links with some CSAs (community supported agriculture) projects which are just starting up which could start to make this dream a reality.
We will always have our own projects but there is a limit to what we can do on our own ofcourse and bringing in other groups will be a big step to scale the project.
4. So what varieties have you been planting this year?
Talking apples, for a few years we have been planting a variety of eating apples and cookers, mainly which I have grafted myself. I’ve decided that we have enough variety of eating apples now and need to focus on cooking apples that are the most use to our production. The eating apples are mainly for personal and staff use but I would love to supply a few boxes to local grocers too one day.
The cookers we are focusing on are, Lord Derby an early season green “codlin” style apple which crops very heavily. A local tree is always the first cooker we pick and we are always amazed by the quality and size of the apples. The Lord Derby apple was bred in Stockport so its very local indeed. The other variety is Newton Wonder, this is a later cooker more similar to Bramley but much more red in colour and slightly sweeter. This was found growing out of the thatch roof of a pub in Derbyshire so also very local and hardy. We find local cookers like these two fruit far more reliably than Bramley.
On Pears we have planted Hessle pears for the first time. This is a Yorkshire variety from near Hull that was once grown all over the North and Scotland. The small pears are ideal for pickling when just underripe with a much firmer texture compared to more modern varietes such as Conference. These we’re once grown widely around Cheshire, especially around Northwich and old trees are still a common sight in farmyards all over. Pears are interesting as they are truly native to the UK unlike apples which are hybrids of sweet apples found in central Asia. That means there are many varieties of eating, perry and cooking pear that have appeared naturally and maybe unique to local areas or even just down to a single tree. We have grafted a few of these – our favourite cooking pear that we refer to as the “Pexhill Pear”, one from Evesham “the cannon ball pear” and one a friend sent from Shropshire the owner calls “the sugar pear”.
The Plums we have planted are the Cheshire Damson, by far the tree we have planted and distributed most, many many hundreds of these over the years. These are perhaps the most hardy fruit tree of all that can thrive in marginal places like the hills on edge of the Peak District. We have also donated quite a few Jacobs Plum trees to various community groups. The Jacobs plum and the Damson are the two fruit trees which inspired our project in the beginning and we have an old friend Peter Woolham to thank for that. He has Jacob plum and Damson growing in his garden that his family planted from suckers many years ago. Finally we have planted 10 grafted Purple Pershore plum, this reliable cropper from Evesham is our favourite all round plum for all our cooking uses and delicious for eating fresh when ripe too, where hoping it does well around Macclesfield.