ANNUAL REPORT WINTER 2011

Directors : Anna Bogucki (Company Secretary) David Hartwell (Legal) Mike Law (Orchards) Henry May (Managing) Graham Schofield (France)
         Registered No 6569694
Correspondence : Knockmoyle, Strone, Dunoon, Argyll PA23 8TB
Email : directors@ciderapples.eu

Our sagacious, soothsaying solicitor said “success breeds success”. This was last year when I was experiencing another trip into the doldrums. His words resonated in my brain possibly because he tends to choose them with the precision of the lawyer that he is. Who then better than David Hartwell to be photographed receiving, from Elizabeth banks, president of the Royal Horticultural Society and Lady Darnley, Lord Lieutenant of Herefordshire, our bronze medal award in the RHS 2011 Herefordshire Orchard Competition?

I reported last year that our French adventure was teetering like a frog with a handbag on overstretched back legs (or something similar). I had hardly grounded my pen when up pops Graham Schofield (now Director, France). Graham, a fruit tree man to the core, had decided to relocate to France with his wife and set up as landscape gardeners. An acquaintance showed him an old copy of an English language magazine that just happened to contain a short article of our French endeavour. France is a huge country so can you believe that Graham and Alex had come to live just five kilometres away from Les Vergers Tallevende? If there is a god He was certainly working hard on that one.  

Anna and I popped over to Calvados last September with our very Scottish neighbours (and had a brilliant time) and the state of the orchards brought tears to my eyes. The trees looked so healthy and perky and the fruit, such as there was, clean and disease free. Obviously they had all been nourished by Graham’s pride in tending them. I had already resolved that we should pursue the French operation but here was the justification.  

It so happened that I bought a little French cottage on eBay one idle Sunday morning about two years ago. It was very cheap and as it was only about 15kms from the orchards I had visions of it becoming our French H.Q. I am afraid that I had over-estimated my health and strength (and resolve). I did add value to the property by obtaining a planning consent for its adjoining land and our visit last September included signing away ownership in front of an attractive Madame Notaire in Tinchebray. The modest profit, after taxes, I have committed to Les Vergers Tallevende. God works in mysterious ways.

For those of you lucky enough to have read my last year’s report you might remember that I mentioned that we had attracted experienced cider maker Simon Abbiss to set up business at Tidnor. He did make cider and juice last season and I helped him design the cyder label. The fact that the portly gentleman with lived-in face and the costrel under his arm bears a striking resemblance to yours truly has been remarked upon. I have had to endure taunts about “modesty” and “ego” but, having been the fat boy at school, I know all about sticks and stones. Ho, ho, ho, there are some perks to this job after all.

Designing labels is no sinecure I can tell you. Our cider is organic but we cannot say so unless we pay tumps of money to the Soil Association. Nor can we use “Herefordshire” unless we pay more money and meet certain standards – it’s the French equivalent of appellation controlee. “Wait a minute,” I thought, we do have a USP (marketing jargon = Unique Selling Proposition) – “how many other orchards have connections in France?”

You will have probably noticed that Inbrew have launched a Belgian “Cidre” this year. As I am fortunate enough to own the number plate C1 DRE I offered their U.K. Vice President the use of same for advertising purposes for a modest fee. At least I received a humorous letter in reply. I am now considering writing to Heineken (Bulmers) as they own C1 DER. Black comedy advertising could have C1 DER on a Ferrari and C1 DRE on an old banger..........? I probably am spending too much time up here in rain ridden Scotland.

Mike Law, our Orchards Director, is a countryman with countryman’s ways about him but his ability to encourage and embrace change never ceases to surprise me. For years we have had Tidnor largely to ourselves and we have grown up with it. Enter Simon stage left and nothing is sacrosanct. Even hard working Mike is appreciative of Simon’s energy and stamina and his capacity to do many jobs at the same time (only women are supposed to be able to do that?). Improvements, improvements everywhere, in-between cider making and juicing and Simon bouncing off down the lanes with his mobile press. One minute our old, wheeled hen house was languishing under a tree, unloved and unrepaired, as it has done for several years, and now it is home to 42 hens laying eggs like crazy. What can I do other than offer to buy the biggest, noisiest cock (or coq) in deference to our French connections?

It is incumbent on all of us at Tidnor to help ensure that Simon’s business is a success in order that we might have a chance to bask in reflected glory. Recently he told me that there has been an attempt to headhunt him. That was like putting a fox in amongst the chickens.

Mike has been in the vanguard of attempts to upgrade our museum collection. He has been hand spraying an allowable garlic based concoction from early spring and has kept that up into the early summer. We are all agreed that it has done some good. We have taken grafts of the very poorest specimens which we will replace them with the resultant trees in 2012/13. David Hartwell kindly donated a trailer load of rich old manure (lawyers and horse shit just seem to slip off the tongue together) and Mike and his two sons seemed to have relished the job of spreading it. We have hopes of enticing in a experienced tree man soon but failing that there is the option of trying to bribe Graham Schofield (and Alex) over to prune the museum.

Don’t run away believing that it is all beer and skittles down on the farm. Dave Tindall, affectionately known by some as the “Honey Monster”, maintains his hives in the orchards and supplies us with the resultant honey in jars ready for me to label. He is a typical Yorkshire countryman of the old, old school who knows the value of a shilling. He is a dab hand at most things and especially farm machinery. He took our topper (grass cutter) away for some welding repairs and when he brought it back he thought that he might just “try it out”. Inadvertently he chose Felicity’s wildlife meadow. The fox inside the coop could not have caused more consternation. I managed to smooth ruffled feathers and have signed up Felicity for another year on our wildflower project.

All this talk of foxes brings to mind my accountant. He is about as old, old as the Honey Monster and whilst he sits in his lair all day nothing seems to escape him. He knows the colour of my socks before I have had the chance to choose them in the morning. When I visit his office in Tarrington village once or twice a year there is no question of him rising to shake my hand and to enquire solicitously about my health - just a gruff, “Ah, then, and who have you managed to upset since I’ve seen you last?”

There is an old saying which I expect you are familiar with; “If you want to find a fool in the country then bring one with you.” I heartily endorse that. Country people are usually as cute as meerkats and just as clannish too. Tread on one paw and half the agricultural neighbourhood start limping. As an outsider paws are often thrust in my path ready for me to fall over. That is the way things are. And once a paw is pointed it is a devil of a job to induce it to point elsewhere. Memories run deep in rural Herefordshire. As an outsider who has caused five buildings to be raised at Tidnor Wood Orchards in as many years, I seem to have earned a category of my own.

On a larger scale the orchards and I have made very many friends locally, nationally and throughout the world too. I try to explain that to the old, old accountant but his eyelids shutter that little more and I know that it is useless. Ah, well, there is something he doesn’t know after all.

Probably the highlight of the Tidnor year has been the opening of an art exhibition in the Cider Museum on September 9^th called “Orchard Art” as part of the 2011 Herefordshire Year of the Orchard event. Aimed at “capturing the beauty and feelings of an orchard” six charities, mainly for people challenged mentally or physically or both, visited with their helpers an orchard for up to a year; some come rain or shine. Youngsters from SHYPP filmed the proceedings throughout that year and the results were shown on a video loop. No prizes for guessing the identity of the orchard.

Anna and I attended the opening which managed to attract the attention of the local M.P. We were thanked handsomely from all quarters for allowing the orchards to be used the way they were and complimented on how beautiful they were and how “safe” too. I felt very humble; not a feeling that I would normally aspire to. I was only too pleased for the orchards to be used in that way and my gratitude was to the organisers, Dave Marshall in particular, for allowing Tidnor to function as a Community Interest Company, as has long been our endeavour. I really do feel that Tidnor Wood Orchards grew a hundred feet in stature that day.

God bless you too.

Henry May 

Knockmoyle, November 2011