{"id":1720,"date":"2017-01-02T08:30:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T22:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=1720"},"modified":"2016-12-12T14:58:00","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T04:28:00","slug":"beginnings-apple-orchard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2017\/01\/beginnings-apple-orchard\/","title":{"rendered":"The beginnings of an apple orchard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sally van Gent’s<\/em> Clay Gully<\/a> is one of those rare books: a delightful read that transports without exaggerating. In these first few pages, she describes the process of finding the house and their decision to grow an apple orchard.\u00a0All accompanied by Sally’s lovely illustrations. The perfect book to read\u00a0for anyone planning a big life change in 2017 \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

After several months of fruitless searching around Bendigo in\u00a0central Victoria, the agent calls to tell us he has found our perfect\u00a0home. Apparently the house is in the middle of ten acres of bush\u00a0and farmland. Right away I know we can\u2019t afford a property like\u00a0that. The agent insists I at least drive past the place.<\/p>\n

He tells me, \u2018If you wait a bit the price will come down.\u00a0I\u2019ve heard the owners are about to go bankrupt.\u2019<\/p>\n

How would you like to pay this man to sell your house, I wonder.<\/p>\n

Out of curiosity I drive down the winding dirt road. To the left\u00a0are green paddocks where a horse is grazing. On the other side\u00a0there is forest, all the way down the hill. At the bottom, where\u00a0there is a wide curve in the road, I spot the house through the\u00a0gum trees. It stands in the centre of a lightly treed paddock and to\u00a0the side is open bush land. The agent persuades us to have a look \u00a0inside. The house, though adequate, is unimpressive. It has a dingy\u00a0seventies-style kitchen and worse, there is ghastly brown and cream\u00a0shag-pile carpet almost everywhere. I look at the view through\u00a0the living-room window and I don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a wet spring and water cascades over the\u00a0paddocks, draining from the bush higher up the\u00a0hill. The agent sends us off to walk around the\u00a0property unaccompanied as he doesn\u2019t want\u00a0to get his feet soaked. Above the house the\u00a0gum trees lean out over two dams. Up\u00a0here the rich soil of the paddocks gives\u00a0way to stony ground, and a patchwork\u00a0of wildflowers grows between the grey,\u00a0lichen-coated boulders.<\/p>\n

Three months later we receive another call\u00a0from the agent. \u2018The owners have gone broke,\u00a0are you still interested in the house?\u2019<\/p>\n

Yes, definitely.<\/p>\n

I walk into the back garden the first morning after we have moved\u00a0in and confront a scene straight from the classic Hitchcock horror\u00a0movie, The Birds<\/em>. Along the top of the fence a row of strange, black\u00a0birds with hooked beaks stare down at me through glowing red eyes. They don\u2019t attempt to fly away when I move towards them.\u00a0Instead they begin to rock back and forth in unison, all the time\u00a0letting out weird, breathy whistles. When they finally fly off I see\u00a0they have white wing feathers.<\/p>\n

\"Birds<\/a><\/p>\n

Beside the house there\u2019s a large shed with an earth floor\u00a0where the previous owners conducted their business\u00a0of making concrete garden ornaments. A giraffe\u00a0with a broken neck sits near the side gate and\u00a0on the back verandah there\u2019s a whole farmyard\u00a0of concrete chickens, ducks and small animals.\u00a0My mother, who lives in a nearby retirement\u00a0village, suggests the elderly people there might\u00a0like them. Soon the animals have all found new\u00a0homes and one old man, who\u2019s been a farmer all\u00a0his life, is absolutely delighted to have chickens and\u00a0ducks in his backyard again.<\/p>\n

At night a dozen large spiders with red-striped legs construct\u00a0huge webs across the verandah. They catch a multitude of tiny\u00a0moths, attracted by the kitchen light. These same moths provide a\u00a0welcome dinner for two small frogs lying in wait on the window.\u00a0The front of the property is divided by a broad irrigation\u00a0channel, used to flood the paddocks in the days when they were\u00a0part of a dairy farm. Contemplating the grassy, treeless\u00a0area farthest from the house, we discuss its possible uses.<\/p>\n

In this, our first year at Clay Gully, our dams fill\u00a0with water in the spring and thunderstorms\u00a0replenish them in the summer. Good rains\u00a0are predicted for next year offering us\u00a0the opportunity to establish an agricultural\u00a0enterprise. I think of goats and chickens but my\u00a0husband, Nick, vetoes all my suggestions. He knows\u00a0only too well that I can\u2019t kill anything and is already\u00a0anticipating the vet bills involved in keeping alive\u00a0aging hens, well past their egg-laying days.<\/p>\n

A lover of good wine, his thoughts turn naturally to planting a\u00a0vineyard, but I can see problems with this suggestion. Not having\u00a0the necessary knowledge or equipment to process the grapes\u00a0ourselves, we would be dependent on large wineries to take our\u00a0fruit and set the price. Instead I think of the beautiful apples\u00a0my grandfather grew in England \u2013 Bramley\u2019s Seedling, Lord\u00a0Lambourne and Red Astrachan. There must be a market for these\u00a0delicious, forgotten varieties. My grandfather grew them without\u00a0artificial fertilisers or pesticides. We decide to follow the long path\u00a0leading to full organic certification of the orchard.<\/p>\n

\"Clay<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s necessary to have a third dam dug in front of the house and\u00a0to purchase additional rural water. The contractor isn\u2019t pleased\u00a0with me when I insist on having an island in the middle of the\u00a0dam. It makes his job more difficult but I know it\u2019ll look beautiful\u00a0and will be a refuge for water birds.<\/p>\n

Then we discover Badgers Keep, a wonderful heritage apple\u00a0nursery with over 500 different cultivars. With so many to choose\u00a0from, I spend many hours poring over their descriptions. One\u00a0apple we should definitely grow is the Bramley\u2019s Seedling. The\u00a0population of the UK eats millions of Bramleys every year and I\u2019m\u00a0convinced that once Australians try them they will love them too.\u00a0The variety has stood the test of time. The original tree, growing in\u00a0a garden in Nottinghamshire, is still bearing fruit after 200 years.<\/p>\n

Next I select Autumn Pearmain, striped and perfumed, and\u00a0grown since the late 1500s. Then there is the Orleans Reinette,\u00a0yellow, sweet and nutty, and the soft and juicy Beauty of Bath.\u00a0My husband Nick, being Dutch, has his own favourite apple much\u00a0loved on the continent. This is the Belle de Boskoop, sometimes\u00a0known as Goudreinet. It has a strong flavour making it excellent\u00a0for cooking. If left longer on the tree it turns into a fragrant, soft-pink\u00a0dessert apple. We order the Bramley\u2019s Seedling and Belle de\u00a0Boskoop and by the time we\u2019ve selected enough cultivars for their\u00a0pollination, we have twenty-four different varieties. In all there will\u00a0be 300 trees.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> to read more, and keep an eye out for\u00a0Sally’s next book,\u00a0<\/em>The Navy-blue Suitcase<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Clay<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sally van Gent’s Clay Gully is one of those rare books: a delightful read that transports without exaggerating. In these first few pages, she describes the process of finding the house and their decision to grow an apple orchard.\u00a0All accompanied … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[524,267,525,265,523,526],"class_list":["post-1720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-extract","tag-apple-orchard","tag-clay-gully","tag-organic","tag-sally-van-gent","tag-the-navy-blue-suitcase","tag-tree-change"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-rK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1819,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions\/1819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}