The Apple Club Newsletter
Winter 2004
The days are short and the nights long. This makes it a great time
of year to take it easy. Perhaps you should treat yourself to a glass
of hot apple juice while you sit down and read the winter edition of
our newsletter. I hope that you enjoy it.
The Orchard County
Much
though I wish that Tipperary could hold this title, Armagh is the
orchard county. It has acquired this title in the past 200 years,
especially since the growing of Bramley’s has commenced there.
Bramley’s were introduced to Armagh in 1884 by a certain Mr. Nicholson
of Crangill, a year immediately after it was awarded the first class
certificate by the Royal Horticultural Society. However, there is more
to Armagh’s orchard pedigree than Bramley’s.
It is recorded that
apples have been grown in Armagh for 3000 years, and St. Patrick
himself is said to have planted an apple tree at Ceangoba, an ancient
settlement east of Armagh city. Early records of the Culdee Monastaries
in Armagh show that the brothers were allowed a treat of apples with
their meals, but only at festival times. And of course, at the time of
the Plantation of Ulster, tenants were encouraged to plant orchards,
surrounded by an enclosed ditch and whitethorn hedge.
Later on,
William of Orange sent his cider maker, Paul le Harper, to Portadown
with some equipment to make sure that there was cider for his army, and
it is said that William quenched his thirst with the cider of the
orchard county before the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Nowadays,
apple growing in Armagh is based on Bramley’s, but 150 years ago there
were many other varieties. These have gradually declined over the
years, not least because the climate of Armagh is not the most suited
for apple growing. However, 5000 acres of apples are still grown there
(almost treble the total Southern-Ireland crop), and interest in all
varieties, both old and new is strong.
One person who has been
instrumental in preserving old apple varieties is Peadar MacNiece. He
was a founding member of the Armagh Orchard Trust which was set up in
1995. Peadar, along with Anita Hayes of the Irish Seedsavers
Association, collected many endangered Irish apples during the 1990’s.
The
Orchard Trust established a Heritage Orchard, and this is located in
the historic walled garden of Drumilly Estate in Loughgall. Planting
started a few years ago, and now around 100 old varieties are being
researched. Though Peadar MacNiece did not live for long enough to see
the fruits of his labour come to full fruition, he would certainly have
taken pleasure in seeing old varieties such as the Bloody Butcher,
Vicar of Brighton, Milltown Cooker and Keegan's Crab flourishing again
in Loughgall.
If you know of an old apple tree which you suspect may
be of Irish origin, the Irish Seedsavers association would be glad to
receive a sample of the fruits for identification. They can be
contacted in Scariff (Co. Clare) at 061-921866, or via their website at
www.irishseedsavers.ie
They also sell young trees of old apple
varieties, and have all sorts of other imaginative gifts that might be
appreciated this Christmas.
Don’t believe what they say
It’s
always nice when someone says something complimentary, so imagine how
satisfied we were to read the following about our farm and products in
the latest edition of the Bridgestone Guide:
“The Apple Farm
Con
Traas is a superb artisan, a man with an artist’s sensibility when it
comes to producing and making cutting-edge foods. The sheer quality of
his fruit – from August’s Discovery apples through to Delbar Estival,
then early Windsors, then into Cox’s, Elstar and his signature Karmine
– is a constant treat (though not actually constant, as this fruit
sells quickly from the barn, the good people of Tipperary knowing a
good thing when it is on their doorstep). He also has fresh
strawberries from May – varieties include Elsanta, Florence and Eros –
then raspberries and plums. All are grown with infinite care and skill.
But
perhaps Mr. Traas’ greatest achievement is the juices he makes from his
fruit. The Karmine blend includes some James Grieve and Bramley, whilst
the special cuv e of Karmine uses hand-selected fruit – “These apples
have more of everything; they are the apples the trees give most to” –
explains Mr. Traas of the selection of fruit. Finally, there is a
superb cider vinegar. 95% of this superb produce is sold direct from
the farm, completing a close relationship between farm, farmer and
customer. This is how all farms should be run and managed. We reckon
Mr. Traas would be a fine Minister for Agriculture.”
Now if only Bertie Ahern were a subscriber…
In the budget
Speaking
of politicians, there was some welcome news for microbrewers in the
budget. Basically, all small breweries will have their rate of excise
duty halved to enable them to compete with large-scale operations.
Unfortunately, as announced, this news only extends to brewers of beer,
though we are hopeful that it will be extended to cider in the finance
bill. If that happens, it may mark the beginning of a new era in
cider-making, with a number of apple growers making cider for sale on
their farms, just as was commonplace in years gone by.
Boring for water
Water
is essential to life. Plants take in carbon dioxide from the air,
utilise the sun’s energy along with water from the environment to make
sugars, and as a by-product exhale oxygen. It’s something that we take
for granted in Ireland, but without plenty of water, the planet could
not live.
In the past summer we got a lesson on the importance of
water to our plants, when our strawberry plants began suffering during
a dry period, and we had to irrigate them.
Normally a plant keeps
the pores or little holes in its leaves open so that it can take in the
carbon dioxide from the air, as it needs this to make sugars and grow.
However, keeping the pores open means that water can escape from the
leaf into the air. And so, in normal conditions, the plant takes up
water from the soil to keep itself going. However, if the soil dries
out, the plant tries to preserve water by closing its pores. However,
with pores closed, it cannot take in carbon dioxide, and so runs out of
sugars and energy. The end result is a plant that goes into partial
shut-down, unable to grow or produce a crop.
As everyone knows, the
public water supply in summertime is less than abundant, with frequent
calls on everyone to conserve water so that the reservoirs will not run
dry. So instead of relying on the public supply for water for our
crops, we have bored a well and built a water-holding tank.
The well
was sunk to 360 feet (about 100 metres), and gives an estimated flow of
20,000 litres per hour. 100 metres is a fair depth, as for instance
parts of Clonmel are only 40 metres above sea level. It took two days
for the drill to get to this depth, as after the first twenty metres of
soil and loose rock, it met solid bedrock, and still had to go eighty
metres through this.
Unfortunately we failed to strike oil. And
while we were drilling we did not know how much water we would find
either. However, the Geological Survey of Ireland told us that there
was a regionally important aquifer across the main road from us (the
Rathronan formation), and a more minor one on our side (the Giants
Grave formation). Their information seems to have been correct, because
our neighbour across the road also drilled a well, and found a larger
water flow without having to drill as deep.
However, 20,000 litres
per hour is plenty. This water is pumped into a 200,000 litre holding
tank. The water from this holding tank can then be used to water needy
crops.
It’s amazing how much water a crop can use though. A typical
wet day may give rise to a centimetre of rain. To water a ten acre
field to the same wetness requires 400,000 litres, or double the
capacity of our holding tank. Clearly then, though we have quite a lot
of water, it would not be enough to irrigate all our crops. Instead we
will use the water selectively, only on crops that are under stress,
and only on areas of an acre or two at a time. This way it should last
for as long as any dry spell will last, and we will also get best value
from it.
Incidentally, for anyone reading this who may be paying
water charges (such as farmers), the cost of extracting your own water
is much less than paying water charges, and with modern filtration and
sterilisation techniques, the water quality can be excellent. Also, you
will be avoiding the government-fluoridated water which has dubious
effects on health and is no longer done in many developed countries.
But that’s another story.
St. Nicholas’s Day in Holland, By Willem Traas
Soon
it will be Christmas. This is the biggest feast during the year in
Ireland, England, America and many other countries. And people give
presents at Christmas.
But when I was a child in Holland Christmas
was a church feast only. We went to church to sing carols on Christmas
Day, but there was another day for getting presents. That was St.
Nicholas’s day on the 5th of December. Saint Nicholas had a servant
called Black Peter.
Each year St. Nicholas came by boat to Holland from Spain. We would sing:
"Zee ginds komt de stoomboot van Spanje weer aan,
Ik zie hem Saint Nicholaas, ik zie him al staan"
In English:
"See the boat from Spain,
I see St. Nicholas again"
Once he had landed, he travelled on a white horse while Black Peter walked. He would journey all through Holland.
My
father had a white horse called “De Witte” or The White One. She did
all the farm-work just like farmers in Ireland worked with their
horses. We were told that De Witte came from Normandy in France. She
had been in the war and was afraid of loud bangs and water.
Now when
St. Nicholas came to our village his own horse was very tired after the
long journey from Spain. So Saint Nicholas asked my father for a loan
of our horse. And that was good, except that De Witte was not used to a
saddle, so St. Nicholas had to sit on her bare back. The Saint must
have been very sore after the day, especially because De Witte was very
slim from eating lots of fruit.
Now from the age of ten I had been
the handler of De Witte. I did all the work with her and we were very
used to each other. So St. Nicholas needed me to go with the horse. So
he said to me: “You can be Black Peter for a day; the real Black Peter
and horse can rest”. Then he made my hands and face black with
shoe-polish and gave me special clothes to wear.
And so the two of
us went visiting the schools where the children were waiting for us.
They gave De Witte some oats and they sang for us. I carried St.
Nicholas’s bag of presents, and he gave one to each child. There were
no bad children. That was good, because naughty children would be put
in the bag and carried back to Spain. Only one teacher was almost put
into the bag. But he was too big.
When all the children in our
village had presents we walked back to my father’s barn. But then
something happened. A car came past (there were only three cars in the
village) and the car back-fired, making a very loud bang. Now De Witte
had eaten oats and was in good form, but got an awful fright from the
bang. She gave a big jump and galloped away with St. Nicholas. I heard
the Saint using bad language, in Spanish I think. But all ended well,
because De Witte ran to our barn with the Saint on her back, and I soon
caught up with them. She stopped there to drink and Saint Nicholas got
off to recover.
This happened 55 years ago. So this Christmas I will remember St. Nicholas and De Witte.
After De Witte died my father got a tractor, and St. Nicholas’s day was never the same again.
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