INITIATIVES (AS AT JULY 2008)

1. We have about 400 different cider and cider-related varieties in our MUSEUM ORCHARD and the scope is limited to find many more in  this,  our  UK  and  Eire  National  Collection®. Our priority

"Welcome"

now must be to find a dedicated orchards-person who will nurture these trees for us – especially in the light of the fact that we lost 25 of our precious Museum trees to mice damage last winter.

2. Because of  the nefarious activities of these pesky  rodents,  it   behoves us     to      maintain     and extend our

DUPLICATE COLLECTION, and we are achieving this by planting up the gaps that occur in our twelve-acre BOTTOM ORCHARD with our rarer varieties. We did try a second location along a fence line, but the voles destroyed nearly all of these duplicate trees – there was too much cover from the predators. We abandoned that idea.

3. Last February, two of us drove across to Calvados and planted our fist 25 trees in our new 10 acres of orchards LES VERGERS TALLEVENDE. Please read our separate page about our French orchard land – it might amuse you.

We have decided to plant the gaps in THIRD ORCHARD with duplicates of our French trees, and rename the Orchard FRENCH ORCHARD

A Frenchie

(that did not take a great deal of thinking about). We brought 3 French trees back from Normandy last February, and these are the pathfinders.

4. Converting into a COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY (CIC) should see a significant impact on our activities and outlook. We have plans to involve Herefordshire infant school children in our orchard  calendar  as  a  core  strategy for an investment for the future, and to that end we are sponsors-in-chief of an art competition for summer 2008. We also plan to get on more intimate terms

with the surrounding counties and arrange open days and ongoing activities.

5. We have been held back to some extent owing to the LACK OF FACILITIES AT TIDNOR – particularly of a public lavatory. We submitted a planning application in January, which took until May to be refused. We have since held discussions with the local Planning Officer and appear to have charted a route ahead. Should our new application be accepted, it is unlikely that any building will be in place before summer 2009 at the earliest. This is for a toilet facility, an office cum mess room and stores, all disguised as a VICTORIAN STABLE BLOCK complete with clock tower.

6. We should achieve ORGANIC CERTIFICATION from the Soil Association in September, after a three-year conversion period. We also hope to officially badge ourselves as a NATURE RESERVE in partnership with the Herefordshire Nature Trust.

7. When sponsor Ann Smith of the Gloucester Orchard Group said that she would like to see DEAD TREES LEFT STANDING, we listened to her and took her ideas on board. For the benefit of the insects and beetles, and the woodpecker no less, we have a number of dead trees in Bottom Orchard available for a special sort of

A Tidnor Tump

sponsorship. We also have a number of TIDNOR TUMPS – piles of logwood specially reserved as insect banks.

8. We are not excited by dusty museum exhibits, but have made one exception in the form of a HUGE CIDER PRESS rescued from Chambercombe Manor near Ilfracombe in Devon. This now stands with pride against the head wall in our Cider House. Outside, we have a STONE MILL awaiting restoration and one day we will mill apples as in days of yore using mule or donkey power.

9. We commissioned famous railway artist Eric Bottomley to create an imaginary scene of our orchards as they might have been in the 1950s (we sell prints of his picture). Eric introduced into his picture a SERIES II LANDROVER and a GREY FERGIE TRACTOR. We have now acquired examples of both the Landrover and the tractor as working assest at Tidnor
 

(although the tractor needs some serious restoration).

10. Cider was made in our unfinished Cider House last autumn. Considering that we used apples at random from the harvester’s trailer, the fermented beverage  proved  to be encouragingly potable. It has  given  us  the confidence to plan a bigger and more specialised making campaign for this coming season.

Hen Coop

11. Veteran Yorkshireman David Tindall is our BEEKEPER. The hives are his, the bees are his but we have contracted to buy all the HONEY that is collected by the bees in our orchard’s hives. Thankfully, this arrives in jars – we just add the labels. We cannot get nearly enough of the stuff – the demand is so great.

12. We have for some time been trying to set up a TIDNOR BRAND. People who know us are pretty well familiar with our Tidnor Wood Orchard Trust logo :
 

Mindful that our Vergers Tallevende give us a much bigger dimension, and aware that our French cousins will not want to be branded as Anglo-Saxon, with the help of Eric Bottomley, we came up with our “apple-in-a-press”:

This has met with considerable approval and we have a big CORPORATE FLAG (6’ x 4’) depicting our logo, which we proudly fly from time to time at our entrance gates (the flagpole we found on eBay, of course).

PLEASE HELP US FLY THE FLAG