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Harrowbarrow & Metherell Community Orchard News Archive
Launch Day 24th July 2011 2pm at the community orchard site at Treragin.
Following the open meeting in May a volunteer steering group was formed to get things started and develop the community orchard site at Treragin. We would like to invite all to come to a community orchard launch event on the Sunday 24th July at 2pm on the orchard site for a big picnic. Come and see where the community orchard will be, have your say regarding the future orchard plans, and have a picnic in our new community space.
The orchard has been funded to this point by the East Cornwall Local Action Group, but will have to be able to raise its own funds to cover running costs in the future. Several ways of doing this were discussed at the open meeting and it was decided that the best way would be to sell crop shares through a membership scheme to those who wanted a share of the harvest. It will however be at least 3-4 years before the apple trees that we plant will really start producing. Early ‘founder’ memberships would be at a nominal rate that would still raise some funds to manage the site, and ‘founder’ memberships would give discounted membership later on when the trees begin to give good harvests. If you are interested in supporting the development of the community orchard in this way please contact Simon Platten (contact details below)
If we have bees on site it will be good for pollination and also allow us to sell the honey locally to raise funds for the orchard. Set up costs for bees are expensive though, and whilst we can beg and borrow most equipment we still need some bees. It was decided to sell honey ‘futures’ at £15 with the promise of 3lbs of honey in return at some point in the future so that we can purchase a colony of local bees. We need to sell at least 10 ‘futures’ so if you are interested please contact Dave Ledger (Our head of Community Orchard beekeeping) as soon as possible.
To clear the willow stumps we shall use pigs. The pigs will be looked after by ‘The Pig Society’ our local pig-rearing co-op which is just starting up. If anyone is interested in rearing pigs for food and would like to join a pig co-op and receive half a pig, please contact Rachel Platten
There is also likely to be a fair amount of wood generated by clearing and coppicing of the overgrown part of the orchard site. It was proposed that the community orchard could raise some funds to tide us over until the trees become productive through a wood fuel co-op. Anyone interested in wood fuel please contact Simon Platten
To create some more trees for the orchard Tamar Grow Local will also be running another grafting workshop on the 23rd July 10am-1pm at the Tamar Valley Centre. The workshop will cover bud grafting and will cost £5. If you are interested please contact Simon Platten
May 29th 2011, First steering group meeting
Most of the steering group who volunteered at theopen meeting were able to meet up on Friday evening at the Orchard site to discuss and make plans.
We decided that the orchard should not just include local variety fruit trees but also a diverse selection of other tree fruit such as Medlar, Figs, Persimmon, Apricots, and some nut trees, including Hazel and Walnuts.
We then started to think about what else we could keep in the orchard (bees and other livestock) and how we would organise teh orchard management and share both the work and the harvest. This is an ongoing discussion and one way to make it an open conversation that anyone can follow is to put it all on a web forum
Join in the conversation Click here to view the HaMCO Forum >>
May 12th 2011, Open meeting 7.30pm-9.00pm Harrowbarrow and Metherell Village Hall
Tamar Grow Local would like to invite you to an open meeting on May 12th at 7.30 -9.00pm at the Harrowbarrow and Metherell Village Hall to discuss possibilities, and make plans for the management of the community orchard at Treragin. Now is the time to get involved and make sure that the orchard is set up and managed as you would like it.
The orchard needs to include fruit varieties for eating, cooking and pressing into juice mainly comprising a mix of local apple and pear, but also a few cherry and plum varieties. However, the way in which the orchard is managed for/by the community is yet to be decided. There are a number of existing models for the management of community orchards that we could use or adapt to meet our needs, and all reasonable suggestions should be considered. Simon Platten from Tamar Grow Local will be at the meeting to present these models and chair the discussion.
It would be useful to have some of your suggestions before the meeting so that Simon can collect them together and present them. This would leave more time for discussion. Please tell us how you would like the orchard to be managed by emailing us here.
March 19th 2011 - We held a grafting workshop to create the initial planting material for the orchard. Richard Vulliamy from the Tamar Valley Orchard Volunteers kindly taught us how to whip graft apples and in the space of 3 hours we managed to graft local varieties onto 50 rootstocks, so well done all round! The grafted rootstocks are now potted up and being kept warm to speed their growth. Considering the that most of the rootstocks were grafted by novices learning the technique, and the speed at which we worked, we seem to have a very good success rate. Approximately 80% of the grafts have taken and are bursting into leaf. Those that do not take this time round could be used again this summer during a 'bud grafting' workshop or be 'whip' grafted again next year.
Harrowbarrow school children have been designing a sign for the orchard. Here are some of our favourite designs.
