From the very outset we both wanted and needed to collect surplus fruit from local gardens. Apart from a few young trees in our back garden, we don’t own any frees of our own so are totally reliant on finding fruit from elsewhere. As time has passed, we’ve developed a pattern of when and where to collect fruit, but no two years are the same.

There are a few places where we’ve gathered fruit each and every year, such as a delightful garden orchard in Chaxhill; the trees have never been sprayed, the quality of fruit is excellent - nature has a way of dealing with pests if left to its own devices - the varieties are ideal (Spartan, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Newton Wonder, Laxton’s Fortune), the fruit easy to pick (no ladders, just a panking pole plus a short distance to lug filled sack to The Apple Wagon) and, best of all, we occasionally get a cup of tea.

Other places come and go. Some orchards are heavily biennial, so we visit every other year. People move house and new owners have other plans. Trees are blown over or, even worse, are chopped down to make room for a flower bed. But the end result is that the gardens from where we get fruit changes from year to year; the map below shows where our fruit came from this year (red pins) as well as in previous years (blue pins).

Coronavirus or no coronavirus, recession or no recession, deal or no deal, there remains a need to sustain interest in Gloucestershire’s fruit-growing traditions, which is the crux and kernel of why we started making cider in the first place. This autumn we gathered more fruit than we’ve ever done before and we’re sufficiently optimistic (or deluded) to believe that people will buy the resulting cider and juice.

So, here are the numbers for the 2020 harvest …

5.5 tonnes from 40+ gardens in Gloucestershire.

Using local fruit is obviously a sustainable way of making cider, even more so if most of that fruit is generally surplus to requirements. Primarily, the people who supply us with garden fruit seem to be pleased that their fruit is put to good use - although they also appreciate the free juice or cider that comes their way.

17 tonnes from traditional orchards in Gloucestershire

We get the bulk of our cider apples from farms around the county that still have good, old-fashioned, traditional orchards. Yarlington Mill, Brown’s Apple, Dabinett and other varieties come from Ashleworth, Tremlett’s Bitter and Balls Bittersweet from Dymock, Kingston Black from Longney (from an orchard that supplied a few tonnes of eating apples too). This year our perry pears mostly came from orchards near Winchcombe, from Kent’s Green and from Eldersfield. We missed out on visiting Arlingham and Westbury-on-Severn this year but hope to be back next.

We also get some cider apples and perry pears from household gardens. There is an ENORMOUS Tremlett’s Bitter tree, which has a tree-house in it, in the back garden of a house in Laverton, on Gloucestershire’s northern border, and next year we’ll try to re-visit a home near Minsterworth to get some Moorcroft perry pears (which are also known as Stinking Bishop pears, after which the excellent, if somewhat fragrant, Gloucestershire cheese made by Charles Martell is named).

1.1 tonnes from 30+ gardens in Bristol

Although Bristol was once part of Gloucestershire, we keep the fruit we collect from the Cider Capital of the World separate from that we collect in what remains of Gloucestershire; the Bristolian fruit becomes a Bristol blend of cider and a Bristol blend of apple juice. One tonne might not sound like a lot, but that 1.1 tonnes from Bristol, a city with a population of 467,000, is the equivalent of 21.9 tonnes from London, with a population of 9.3 million. So, THANK YOU, Bristol, for your energy and generosity in gathering so much surplus fruit … and we think we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of what’s available in Bristol.

And one more point …

Freshly pressed juice from unsprayed fruit from gardens and traditional orchards of Gloucestershire (plus one orchard in Wiltshire and one orchard in Herefordshire, last year) is the ONLY juice we use to make our cider. This isn’t a publicity stunt, to make us look good whilst tanker-loads of apple juice concentrate are shipped in from overseas. And we make all our cider in a chilly barn in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire - we don’t outsource it to someone else or re-locate production to somewhere more convenient. We’re boringly serious about doing things properly.

Finally, …

… (at long last, we hear you say) … these are the places, in no particular order, our fruit came from in 2020. We reckon it’s as diverse a list of place names as any cider-maker could compile and which is why we think we can say that BUSHEL+PECK is Gloucestershire, bottled;

Longney, Charlton Kings, Northleach, Winchcombe, Leckhampton, Dymock, Great Washbourne, Dursley, Lechlade, Chedworth, Swindon Village, Eldersfield, Prestbury, Cambridge, Redmarley D’Abitot, Winchcombe, Hazleton, Quenington, Great Washbourne, Oxenton, Minsterworth, Ashleworth, Sudgrove, Kent’s Green, Chaxhill, Hawkesmoor Common, Chipping Campden, Farmington.

And one last thing …

This year we were pleased to add Redmarley D’Abitot to the list of places from which we get fruit, if only for its unusual name. Derived from the Old English words hrëod and lëah, meaning a woodland clearing with a reedy pond, it suggests there may have been Old English words for a woodland clearing with a pond without reeds, which is the sort of thing that amuses us. Urse d’Abitot was a Sheriff of Worcester and local Lord of the Manor in 1086, when the Domesday Book was compiled; Redmarley D’Abitot makes an appearance in that august tome. And Redmarley D'Abitot represents the growth of Gloucestershire; whilst the county may have been trimmed in the south, with the removal of Bristol in 1373 and the creation of Avon in 1974, Redmarley D'Abitot (and environs) were part of Worcestershire until successfully becoming part of Gloucestershire in 1931.

To everyone who supplied us with fruit - THANK YOU. And thank you, too, if you’ve read this far.

Apple source