Orchard of Promises

Have you ever noticed that you can walk, or drive, past places every day and not have the slightest idea that they even exist? Until, perhaps, somebody asks you about them, or having left the vicinity you happen to return, years later, as a tourist.

Word reached Lunchista that some simple, hard slog was needed to help restore a neglected orchard just a couple of miles down the road. The orchard lies just beyond an out-of-town shopping centre which, appropriately enough, was built on the site of a mental hospital's grounds. It transpired that two-thirds of the orchard had in fact been destroyed in order to build the shopping centre: sadly the mental hospital was no longer around to provide suitable accommodation for whoever came up with that idea.

So, for about a decade, the remaining trees have been offering their fruit each year, unnoticed except for a few locals who were still in the know, the ground staff of the shopping centre who used it as an organic dustbin, and Tescos, who (rumour had it) wanted to pull up the remaining trees to make way for a garden centre.

We turned up one day in late winter. It felt odd walking past all the designer clothes, dressed as if for a spot of fellwalking but with the interesting addition of a bowsaw, a spade and a pair of loppers. It would have made an unlikely (but rather entertaining) story "down the station" if there'd suddenly been a terrorist alert at the shopping centre.

We shovelled half-decayed garden waste away from the tree-trunks, to stop them from rotting. We heaved it all onto a trailer that the groundsmen had helpfully left there. It turned out that everybody was happy to let us get on with it: less work for the groundsmen and something nice to put in the CSR reports of both the shopping centre and their landlords. The groundsmen had never heard of on-site composting, but you can't have everything.

Some of the trees had dead branches, which we lopped off, and during the harder-than-usual winter, rabbits had been gnawing the bark. Lunchista's offer of an air-rifle wasn't taken up though, for some reason.

We have been back twice, and the groundsmen have helpfully lit a bonfire for the wood waste (except the good bits, which have quietly been spirited away to the woodburning stove at Chateau Lunchista). It looks as if all the trees bar one have pulled through, and those which are missing from the rows can be replaced, with local breeds of apple, pear and plum.

If all your apples turn up at once (or you have just cadged some from the ground somewhere and they don't look very presentable) it's easy to deal with. Just peel them, cut into chunks, simmer for a few minutes til soft, mash with a spudbasher, and freeze. Apple puree can be served hot or cold with any permutation of: sugar, raisins, fruit syrup, ice-cream, chocolate, breakfast cereal, rabbit (all right I made that last one up).

The orchard is now Registered, so no-one can demolish it without incurring the wrath of PTES. The Plan is to turn it into a Community Orchard and have picnic tables and events. In the long run, the plan is to still have apples, no matter how expensive, or unreliable, the supply of imported fruit (or indeed rabbits) may become.

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24th April: It looks as if The National Trust have been following the Year-Long Lunch Break! Funds have been set up for preserving and reviving old orchards. Perhaps we're starting a new fashion.