The Apple Club Newsletter

Summer 2003

It’s that wonderful time of year when we may wonder whether our summer is over or not, but not to fear; there is plenty of good weather and sunshine to come, at least according to the local experts.

Charity event:

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the fund to send Teresa on her charity trip to Moldova. Teresa managed to raise all the funds she required and by the time you read this, will be working with children in a Moldovan orphanage.
We are happy to say that the parachute jumpers (Noreen and Josef) who helped raised funds for Teresa both landed safely and enjoyed the event. Feel free to congratulate them next time you call in.

Watering the strawberries:

With all the good weather we have been having, it has been necessary to water the strawberries. Of course, we give our fruit nothing but the purest of spring water, taken directly from the old farmhouse well on our farm. It is preferable to the municipal supply, which contains fluorine and chlorine, which plants do not react well too. And of course, if you want to drink it yourself, it also tastes much nicer.

A new Labrador:

In the past two weeks people visiting our farm will have noticed a new arrival. We have now got a new Labrador puppy to keep our old Labrador company. Her name is Judie, and we got her near Whitelands Cross between New Inn and Poulmucka. She is golden in colour and very well behaved. She does not even bark much at night. Give her a rub next time you call into the sales shed. We are keeping her there during the day until she gets used to the traffic.

Strawberry Stories

The strawberry is an interesting fruit, belonging to the rose family, and unique because it is the only fruit with seeds on the outside rather than the inside. It has been much praised over the years: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did." So said the 17th century English writer, Dr. William Butler, and I for one am inclined to agree.
Not that I would go so far as Madame Tallien, a prominent figure at the court of the Emperor Napoleon, because she was famous for bathing in the juice of fresh strawberries. She used 22 pounds per basin although needless to say, she did not bathe daily.
Nor am I convinced of the necessity of a custom, still practiced in Bavaria, of people tying small baskets of wild strawberries to the horns of their cattle as an offering to elves. Mind you, at least they only use small baskets of strawberries, so if they do fail to convince the elves (who love strawberries) to encourage their cows to produce an abundance of milk, at least not much is lost.
You will also only lose half a strawberry if you follow tradition as outlined in the legend which has it that if you break a strawberry in half and share it with someone, you will fall in love with each other. Mind you, these days you might have more success if you offered that special someone an entire punnet of strawberries from The Apple Farm.
And even if that fails to have the desired effect, at least you can be consoled in the knowledge that you have improved the health of your suitor. Ancient Romans believed that the berries alleviated symptoms of melancholy, fainting, inflammations, fevers, throat infections, kidney stones, halitosis, attacks of gout, and diseases of the blood, liver and spleen. While not all these health benefits have been proved by medical science, some have been, and as usual, there is more truth in these myths than may once have been suspected.

Cider vinegar:

As you may have noticed, we always like trying something different on our farm, and it is with this in mind that we began to experiment in the making of cider vinegar two years ago. Because of the nature of vinegar making, this is a long-term project, and so it is only now that we have the first completed batch, even though we started two years ago.
It all began with the apple harvest of 2001, which was a very good one. In an effort to use some surplus apples, we set some to ferment. This was done by juicing the apples, and putting the juice in a tank with an air-lock. Because of the natural yeasts within apples (and on their surface), they soon began to ferment to cider. The reason for the air-lock on the tank was to prevent an explosion, because the yeasts that make cider produce carbon dioxide gas in the process, and this needed to be released. After about six months all the sugar in the juice had converted to alcohol, which meant that we had a cider with about 6% alcohol (because each 1% sugar gives 0.5% alcohol, and apples naturally contain about 12% fruit sugar).
Rather than drink this cider (which was a temptation), we then added a special vinegar-making bacteria culture. These bacteria live on alcohol, and utilise it in such a way that they convert it to acid. Unlike the yeasts that make cider, vinegar-making bacteria need plenty of air, and this was provided by keeping the cider in an unsealed shallow tank. After a few months a “mother” (gel-like substance) had grown on the surface of the cider, and this was the culture which was at work converting the cider to vinegar. Because these bacteria function best at temperatures of about 30 C, and because we do not get such high temperatures in Ireland, it took over twelve months for the bacteria to convert the alcohol to vinegar. The result has been worth the wait however, and now, almost two years after we began, we have a nice vinegar bottled and ready for sale.
As many of our callers have already told us, cider-vinegar has for many years been regarded as somewhat of a miracle cure. Amongst other things, the particular bacteria used in its making has anti-biotic properties, in that it can inhibit the growth of undesirable bugs. Cider vinegar has also been attributed with anti-arthritic properties and indeed, a number of books have been written espousing its virtues. I am just happy to recommend it as a nice salad dressing.

Recipe: Islands in the Cream

(taken from Bord Glas Fruit Recipe Series)

Equipment:
Blender

Ingredients:
2 meringues about 5cm (2”) diameter
250g (9oz) hulled strawberries – keep two for decoration
3 scoops of vanilla ice cream
100ml (3 fl. oz.) milk

Method:
Blend together one of the meringues, the strawberries and milk. Then add the ice-cream and blend for another few seconds.
To thicken add more ice-cream or to make it thinner, some more milk.
Serve in two glasses. Crush the remaining meringue lightly and sprinkle on top.

Summer in the fruit garden

Apples
If you have a good crop of apples on your trees, look well after them, as you are one of a fortunate few. The poor weather during pollination time has meant that many apples fell off after flowering, and that for many, crops will be light (as indeed will crops of Champagne grapes, which are predicted to be the worst for fifty years). Keep the area around the trees weed-free, and add some farmyard manure if the leaf colour is a bit light. If there is still an abundance of fruit, remove some to allow the others get bigger and tastier. Spraying should not be necessary from now on.

Plums
Plums are also very light in every location that I have seen. No intervention should be needed between now and harvest.

Strawberries
Strawberry plants are already producing new runners. Either cut these off to divert all energy into fruit, or allow them to root so that you can transplant them next winter. Keep birds away from fruits with netting over the plants, and keep slugs at bay with beer-bait or slug pellets.

Raspberries
Raspberries are now ripening. Harvest them every day to prevent mould from infecting healthy fruits, and cover with netting if there are many birds about. Keep weeds at bay by hand-weeding, and if more than five new canes per metre of ground are appearing from the soil, remove the smaller and weaker ones.

Children’s Section, By Willem Traas

Strawberry time.
It is strawberry time in Ireland, in England, and in Holland too. That is where I came from in 1967. Now is a good time to think about strawberries, because you can see them and taste them everywhere. But when I think of strawberries, I also think of Holland. The official name of Holland is The Netherlands. Holland is only a part of the Netherlands. And The Netherlands has 12 small provinces. I came from one called Zeeland. (This means sea-land in English). New Zealand was named after my province. It is a province of many islands.
In 1953 a terrible flood struck our province, and 1800 people drowned, and many animals too. After this flood a huge dyke was made to protect the land from flooding again. This dyke is called the Delta Works, and it keeps the sea from over-flowing the reclaimed land, much of which is below the level of the sea.
If you ever travel to Holland by plane to Schiphol (Amsterdam airport) or ferry across the North Sea, you will see that the land is flat and everything is straight. This makes it easy to cycle, and in Holland people cycle a lot. There are special bicycle lanes along all the roads, both in the countryside and the cities. They even have their own traffic lights. It is very easy to cycle in Amsterdam, which is Holland’s capital, and famous for its culture, nightlife and canals. Rotterdam is famous too, but really only for its harbour, which is the biggest in the world.
Apart from cycling, you can travel in Holland by canal in a boat or barge, and also by skating in winter when the water freezes to ice. Skating is very popular, with skating marathons held in years when the weather is cold enough.
Also popular is soccer, and I played it too when I was young, and skated and cycled. But I was no Sean Kelly or Ruud van Nistelroy. Instead I grew strawberries and other fruit, and we still do on our farm, though not in Holland any more, but rather in Ireland.


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