Nine volunteers picked around 25 full boxes of apples over two
seperate days. It was quickly realised that the best picking method
was shaking individual branches with a long apple picking pole and
letting ripe apples drop into a stretched out tarpaulin held by
four people. We picked mainly from the Nab Wood area of Shipley,
which I visit 'cos my parents live there, and I had spotted the
trees on scouting forays around the neighbourhood. A couple of
houses in Ilkley contacted us through other contacts and a couple
of people responded to an ad in the paper. We always picked with
the kind permision of the residents. Absolutely no scrumping
here!
Thirteen houses with fruit trees were contacted. We managed to
pick from 5 of these which had a total of 9 trees between them.
Four different groups received boxes of apples.
- The Treehouse Cafe who use Fairtrade, organic and local food
where possible.
- The Trident Healthy Living Project which has projects such as a
'Dad's cook and share', a 'Family tea-time club' and an 'Older
person's lunch club'.
- The Curry Project which provides meals for the homeless.
- CALEB which provides drug and alcohol services including a
kitchen.
Four different varieties of apples were identified by taking
samples of the apples to Bradford Apple Day. The varieties were
Newton Wonder (which we were told was a good keeper - 4 months on
and I am still grating them into my porridge), Keswick Codling - a
cooker/eater, Lord Lambourne - an eater and a dark purple one
called Spartan which was absolutely delicious.
Any damaged or poor quality apples were turned into apple juice
and cider.
We aim to repeat the success of this project in 2009 with the
contacts that we have built up and hopefully more people will come
forward who have more fruit than they know what to do with.