CHAIRMAN’S REPORT      WINTER 2007

OUR FIFTH ANNIVERSARY

I have in mind that famous photograph of a line of construction workers sitting nonchalantly along a girder, enjoying their snap (luncheon), high up in the skeletal framework of a pre-war New York skyscraper. The piquancy is in their apparent disregard of the danger that one slip would mean a fall of hundreds of feet.

I see Tidnor Wood as the skyscraper in its early stages of construction but if I represent the men then I am clinging on alone and for dear life in an advanced state of acrophobic related agoraphobia (that’s enough of the clever stuff).

If our visitors have one thing in common it is their admiration that we have achieved so much in so short a time. Like the skyscraper we have branched out far and wide, whilst our roots are in fertile ground our shoots have shot up and out in all directions and now we have to fill out the spaces in-between if we are to be fruitful. Perhaps, already, on this our fifth anniversary, some pruning is necessary.

I make no apologies for our flying start. Until we had a substantial collection of trees we had nothing to boast about, to use to influence people with, to help us be taken seriously. It was a bonus to be awarded, after just four years, prestigious National Collection® status (albeit provisional) by the NCCPG. They do not bestow their accolades lightly. We have over 400 cider and cider-related apple varieties in our collection and I believe that that makes us the largest collection in the world. We make no secret of our trees; they are to be found on our website at www.tidnorwood.org.uk

I had not envisaged our extending our orchard area so quickly – if at all. One plot of orcharding just fell into another and we owned 26 acres as if in the blink of an eye. The opportunities had to be taken as they arose. To me it was uncanny. Our main collection is in our five-acre Museum Orchard and we are able to plant duplicate trees in the gaps in our remaining 21 acres of orcharding. Our larger size has necessitated equipment and buildings and our open store, constructed mainly from reclaimed materials, has enjoyed a stream of admirers, as will our new Cider House, I am sure.

We are on the verge of being certified as organic by the Soil Association. I bumped into Dr. Bob, the owner of Tidnor Wood itself, just last month and he remarked on just how much wildlife and wild flowers had returned to the orchards since the regular drenching by noxious chemicals had ceased. This confirmed what I already knew, as I am now actively trying to get the whole acreage officially designated as a nature reserve.

Worryingly our yields have plummeted over the three-year conversion period but experts say that they may bounce back somewhat and what we save on chemicals and the cost of applying them together with the premium in the price of organic fruit, we might be O.K.

We wasted no time in commissioning a painting of Tidnor Wood Orchards circa 1956 by renowned railway portrait artist Eric Bottomley followed by a superb A1 sized poster by orchard artist Jonathan Latimer depicting a collage of cider apple varieties. We sell limited edition, artist signed, prints of these at a discount on discounted prices and we can hardly do worse if we gave them away. We sell honey and logs and having our own unique logo we are set up for branded clothing and other products.

Last December Anna and I nipped over to Picardy to pick up a French cider press ex eBay. I suggested that we extended our break by a couple of days and a detour via Normandy. Through an amazing set of coincidences we came back home with ten acres of beautiful land and Les Vergers Tallevende in the making; a French collection of cider apple varieties. Courtesy of kind M.Couturier of Haute Normandie sixty varieties are with our nurseryman, Paul Davis, in Llandeilo, and we can expect to see Barbarette, Clozette, Egyptia, Tête de Brebis and others in Third Orchard, Tidnor, next year. Whether we shall ever see them in Vergers Tallevende, near Vire, Calvados, is another matter – that may just be an orchard (a dream) too far.

Our rapid expansion has been at the expense of our microenvironment. We have not picked up a local volunteer force along the way. My living in Scotland has something to do with that, as has our ability to pay local contractors for all the work that has been needed. Having volunteers creates a new set of management tasks and problems so it is not all beer and skittles but when Claes Mark, our Orchard Keeper, moved on in October, our not having the organisation to compensate in the short term was keenly felt.

It is not that we have not tried to drum up some local support; we have probably just not gone about it in the right way. As we have taken not one penny of public money our not being seen trying to muscle our snout into the trough of charity funding has been to our detriment.  Tidnor Wood Orchard Trust is not a registered charity. Perhaps it should be?

It is not that we have deliberately kept a low profile locally. I have written to the Chairman of Herefordshire County Council several times telling him what we are about, to the Mayor of Hereford and many other local bodies and organisations. Tidnor Wood Orchards featured on the front page and as the leading article in the February edition of magazine “Herefordshire Society” whilst the Gardening Supplement of the Daily Telegraph on the 21^st October, in commemoration of Apple Day, proclaimed Tidnor Wood as one of the top ten orchards in the whole country that people should visit (it is a pity that they did not think to tell us first). In August we played host to the Bartestree and Lugwardine Group Parish Council on what proved to be a thoroughly delightful evening. After which, with no solicitation from me, the councillors voted to sponsor Hereford Redstreak in Museum Orchard.

A Bartestree family, the product of centuries of farming the fertile valleys of the Lugg and Wye, have taken up some of the slack caused by our losing Claes. Already they have found us a tractor and, as I write, apple juice is fermenting away in out new cider house. Sue, Rob and James Barrell have invaluable local knowledge and contacts and they have raised my spirits no end.

It would be all too relatively easy to hunker down in Lugwardine in particular and Herefordshire in general and be parochial. We hold the National Collection® (Malus – cider making) for the United Kingdom and Eire (by the NCCPG definition). We have all the Irish varieties that we can find as well as all those from Devon and Somerset and Gloucestershire etc. and the Channel Islands too. Within Herefordshire there are plenty of forces that would like us to identify with that county alone and as for having aspirations in France, mon Dieu, nobody has actually called me a traitor to my face. We are a National Collection® and, in my opinion, we should do all that we can to be seen to be a national (or international) collection. Our roots quite literally just happen to be in Herefordshire.

I have tried to take a macro environmental view in searching to find a long-term future for the Tidnor Wood Orchard Trust. I did offer ourselves, lock stock and barrel, to the National Trust, but evidently we are too small beer for them. I have looked at the Brogdale Trust, home of the National Fruit Collection®, and visited their site in Kent, but they have survival problems of their own just now. Our solicitor says that merging into a ready-made charity would be a good idea. All I can say is that that is easier said than done.

I have tried for sponsorships and for strategic alliances. From Chairman Sir Brian Stewart down, Scottish and Newcastle PLC have the knack of saying “no” yet leaving the supplicant feeling that he had achieved some sort of a result. They came second only to Buckingham Palace when I asked that Prince William might pop his namesake into the ground at our location 300 (“Prince William”, a new cider apple variety from Bulmers). At the other end of the scale contrast the likes of CAMRA to who’s Director of Cider and Perry I wrote twice and who could not be bothered even to acknowledge my letters. By coincidence I ran into one of their field officers at a seminar and he confirmed that his bossette had received both letters. He drank our cider, made all manner of promises and then disappeared off our orchard floor. Huh. I might try Magners in Eire before I give up entirely on the sponsorship front.

I have made all manner of other approaches. If I related them all it would be a study of apathy and I would be in danger of becoming even more unpopular than I am now. For that reason the time has probably arrived that I should duck out. Museum Orchard and its National Collection® of cider apples is safe from my death or disillusionment but that is not the case with the associated 20 acres which make Tidnor Wood Orchards the wonderful place that it is. I could sell the latter as pony paddocks and make a small fortune and walk away. I do not want to do that – it was never my intention - but I cannot move on until I have secured the future of Tidnor Wood Orchards one way or another.

Against all this there is a whole list of people who really care and who I should thank. Their day will come, I hope. Many sponsor trees in Museum Orchard. All our sponsors are important to this project and may hold the key to our future. I have met some delightful newcomers this year. Rob Barrell says that we might have a shindig this coming summer if the cider is potable.

I promised not to put our sponsors under pressure or to send begging letters but may I be forgiven in musing that if every sponsor found us another (new) sponsor we would nearly double our sponsorship list in consequence?

Just this last month I have been made aware of Community Interest Companies (and even Community Interest PLCs). Created by a 2004 Act of Parliament these are intended as a halfway house between a commercial enterprise and a full-blown charity. Because Tidnor Wood is sustainable and has tremendous potential for business opportunities in bolt on enterprises this could be the way forward. Even along the lines whereby sponsors become shareholders in a C.I.PLC? That could be very exciting?

The problem would be in getting officers to perform the main functions of such a company – and initially on a volunteer, expenses only basis (although I firmly believe that true sustainability comes through paying people properly for the work that they do). There is no reason, with the Internet and emails, that the officers of such a company could not be spread throughout the U.K. and Eire or even beyond. Where there is a will there is a way. I have operated from Scotland for the best part of four years. What do you think? If not yourself do you know anybody with skills who would like to make a positive contribution towards helping Tidnor Wood in particular and our environment in general? We are not talking “committees” here; we are talking of a Board of Directors. Or is this me just clutching at straws – again? From single straws great haystacks are made n’est-ce-pas?

A bit of fun would be nice too.

The problem with using contractors is that they serve more than one master and often they react best to he who makes the most noise or is closest to hand. Our picking contractor, Chris Webb, is another son of the soil and I feel a real affinity towards him. I am not at all sure, however, that he subscribes to my avowed objective of picking up every son-of-a-bitch apple or that his men have eyes in the backs of their heads.

I took the unusual step last month of travelling down to Tidnor by train. This involved Anna giving me a lift to the ferry, the boat to Gourock for the local Glasgow train, a Virgin Pendalino to Crewe and a Sprinter to Hereford. With a crumbly’s discount card and advance booking this 350 miles was achieved at a little more than £30 return. The taxi for the couple of miles from Hereford station to Tidnor Wood and back was £20. Such is life.

I was dumped at Tidnor’s open double gates together with three Morrisons’ bags of groceries in the fading light of dusk. The tops of the trees were already darkening silhouettes. I expected the heady aroma of fermenting fruit that could give so much pleasure to the detached observer (to me it screamed something about income wasting away on the ground) but there was another smell in that still autumnal air. It became stronger as I closed on our buildings. “Welcome back,” said the stiff and eyeless, decomposing ewe. The poor animal had apparently found open gates and sought refuge from a dog that has been a scourge to the local stockmen for some months. Anyhow, that is what I reckoned.

I had difficulty getting to sleep that night. I was over tired and under exercised, enduring flashbacks of my dragging away that maggoty sheep, but it was mainly the irregular plopping of apples onto the orchard floor or, more disconcertingly, via one of the roofs. Even worse was that my brain refused to stop working out the percentage of these windfalls that might get to the cider maker’s mill and be turned into gold.

In the early hours I was woken first by a squirrel on the tin roof. At least I believed it was a squirrel – what else could it be? Only by leaving on the bathroom light did I manage to persuade it to sod off (I forgot to mention that we had mains electricity connected this year). No sooner was I asleep than a rabbit started up right under my bedroom floor. At least I assumed it was a rabbit by the way it was scuffling around energetically. What else could it be? Brock the badger was heavier and clumpier and hitherto has usually stumped off grumpily when I banged on the caravan insides. The rabbit was not impressed with such scare tactics. It waited until my breathing was shallow and regular and started revving up again. By morning I was a shadow of my former self. Is this what being organic is all about?

Yes, a bit of fun would be nice too.

Henry May

Knockmoyle