Ask not ... and a butterfly flaps its wings.

A comma butterfly (on a Woodstock hyacinth, we are reliably informed). Photo by Norfolk School of Gardening.

Chaos is the science of surprises and Chaos Theory is an attempt to explain the unpredictable, the non-linear, the surprising, the things that are difficult or impossible to predict. Perhaps the Butterfly Effect is the most famous principle of chaos, which suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico has the power to cause a hurricane in China. It may take a very long time and there may be an awful lot of intervening steps, but if the butterfly didn’t flap its wings at a precise point in time and space then the hurricane would not have happened.

It seems to us that Covid-19 is Chaos Theory in action, geographically reversed; someone in Wuhan eats bat & armadillo soup and three months later, 5,597 miles away, the Watershed Bristol closes its doors and cancels its month-long Cider Celebration, The Farm in Stratford cancels its anniversary event and the White Hart in Winchcombe shuts its doors … the list goes on and on and on and on. It goes far and wide and in the most unpredicatable ways; the Risk Assessments of the Norfolk School of Gardening (NSG) may have considered the likelihood of someone falling off a ladder or through a dodgy manhole cover but probably didn’t consider the wider effects of the consumption of bat & armadillo soup in Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China. Chaotic, surprising, unpredictable, non-linear events. We mention NSG as they provided the butterfly photo, for which many thanks, and because they too have had to close their gates, another random victim of The Virus chaos.

Running any small business has its challenges and it becomes a bit more difficult when most of your customers shut up shop. That the supermarkets are doing a roaring trade (thanks to the panic-buying of a large group of selfish and moronic fools) is of little or no comfort to us as the majority of their alcohol is supplied by the large breweries, distilleries and cider-makers. Our business will continue (we hope) in the Mid-Counties Co-Op and other smaller supermarkets, farm shops and delis that both sell BUSHEL+PECK and remain open. We’ll have to find new ways and avenues - “channels” in corporate-speak - to sell our cider but in doing so we feel that there is a greater imperative - to do the right thing in the right way.

JFK, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of USA

Supermarkets aside, most businesses are going to be adversely affected by Covid-19. We’ve all got bills to pay and incomes to earn. But surely, right now, we need to remember our humanity and give it a higher priority than a relentless search for lucre. It just isn’t appropriate - it may even be immoral - to travel around the country dispensing cider, contravening both national needs and licensing regulations. Perhaps this is as good a time as any to remember JFK’s inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country”. We don’t claim to be saints but we do know right from wrong.

So, if you see our cider somewhere please consider buying it. If you don’t see it but would like to try some then it is available from Crafty Nectar or from Scrattings. Thank you for supporting Bushel+Peck, cider made with the right ingredients, made in the right way and sold in the right way.