Country diary: a log of apple crops from our orchard spans the decades

The sun's as of now up and the camomile edging the way is canvassed in dew. Beads stream down the blushing apples on our young tree, "Winston", self-rich and a decent practitioner for the north. It's an abundant year in our valley, on account of the chilly, pre-summer and an absence of ice at bloom time. Thrushes scrabble, mad among winged animal cherry branches, these wild natural product trees loaded down with minimal dark berries. Pears age on the tree by the house divider and wasps bunch on eaten-out plums.

Apple trees have great and awful years. I bring down the Orchard Book from my youth plant; its records return to the 1950s. There's the smell of old paper and its cover is form dotted and torn. A texture secured ring fastener costing 3 shillings and 9 pence, free strings dangle along its broke spine. The early sections are in the sporadic lettering of an old , at that point in my mom's blue ink, and ultimately some in my adolescent penmanship.
\age from the writer's family Orchard Book. Photo: Susie White

Fluctuating between "poor product" and "beyond any reasonable amount to pick", the yield was estimated in bushels. We filled vast boxes and lined the wooden racks in the harsh elements basement where, separated, they would last a winter. I savored their names: "Peasgood Nonsuch", "Worcester Pearmain", "Laxton's Superb", "Lord Pippin", "Winter Greening". The most punctual of all, "Magnificence of Bath", a pink-flushed apple I took pleasure in eating straight from the tree. "Charles Ross", especially beneficial, became by the leak of the septic tank.

Issues are noted in the book: "sawfly", "codlin" and "decay". Some natural product was purchased by the food merchant: "Sold to Mr Dearlove at a shilling a pound." Each tree recorded in the book was recognized by a white number painted on its bark. In the event that one fell in a hurricane or was chopped down due to ulcer, a line was drawn over the page.

Lichened trees, nobbly from pruning, I would climb their harsh branches to tuck away among the takes off. My most loved was "Baumann's Reinette", an antiquated espalier said to be 150 years of age when I was a tyke. My mom's remark in the book in those waste-not years – "a great apple, in consummate condition for eating at Christmas".