Ripe for the PICKING

I fell in love with orchards in the summer of 2001. We’d just bought a house in Somerset that came with a small, broken-down cider orchard. It was sadly neglected: the trees were unpruned and stood at drunken angles, or they had succumbed completely to lie flat out, used by the sheep as back scratchers in the June heat. Many had given up the ghost long ago; some staggered on like old men weighed down by their improbably enormous burdens of mistletoe.

Neglected it was, but it was not silent. Our old orchard was full of flying, creeping, buzzing, knocking, noisy animals. Lying in the grass, I couldn’t believe the life I saw and heard around me. It turns out that orchards are absolutely brilliant