Harvest Time with the Bloody Butcher
What’s the Bloody Butcher doing with the Lady’s Finger and the Cat’s Head? Trying to make the number 10? If I told you they were all spotted hanging around the apple tree walk in Cloughjordan, would that sound any less eerily surreal?
Fear not! These are just three of the more bluntly named of our 65 heritage apple varieties, planted in this little part of our ecovillage.
They form part of the edible landscape we’ve put in place on our 67 acres. Thousands of fruiting trees and bushes have been planted, including hundreds of apple trees.
Around my own house, there are 24 apple trees — and one Victoria Plum tree. Many of the ecovillage houses are similarly surrounded by apple and plum trees, as well as by berry bushes and other edibles.The apple tree walk, beside lots of raspberry bushes and allotments, features a different heritage variety tree for each of the 65 planted — they are sourced from the Irish Seed Savers. Beside where I work, a mini orchard of about 40 apple trees has also been planted. Some are bulging and brimming with fruit as I peer out of the window.
As the ecovillage is relatively new — the first houses were only started in 2007 — these apple and other fruiting trees have grown up around us. Like our tween and teenage children, the rate of growth is sometimes overwhelming!
There is something quite specific about the pang of guilt you encounter in an ecovillage when you accidently kick or squish an apple that you could have eaten, juiced, stewed or even turned into cider.
So, each year as the trees grow, our harvesting and processing of the apples has to grow too. Personally, I try to take a walk over the September and October months, into the places where the most windfall apples are likely to be. I’ve an ok juicer — and, in fact, I like the fact that it’s only ok because there is still enough fibrous pulp left behind to aid digestion. A lovely apple moose also settles on top of the juice once made, which I gleefully scoop and scoff with a hearty spoon.
Windfalls are my preferred option for juicing — I don’t mind the odd bruise, and also feel guilty picking apples when there are almost perfect ones on the ground all around. I’ve allowed myself to opt for bendy branch apples too — to protect the branch from breaking of course!
On these little wanders, I’ve tried to go for one tree at a time, usually a tree surrounded by plenty of windfalls. First, I approached it form one end, stopped off at the Appletown Wonder, the Cavan Sugarcane, Finola Lee, Ballyvaughan Seedling, and the brilliantly bountiful Mrs Perry, in sequence along the apple tree walk.
I photograph the label and the apple so I can get to know them better — sweet or sour, firm or yielding — but inevitably, by the time I get home, I have more than one variety.
They really do come in all shapes and sizes, with all kinds of knobbles and skin blemishes — this does not matter a jot to me. The weirder the better, especially for juicing.
More recently, at the other end of the walk, I’ve collected from the wildly different Ross Non Pareil — a firm peary apple with rough sandy skin — and the Lough Tree — red, soft and sweet variety which also has a pear texture and flavour, but at the yielding yellow-flesh end.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that Cat’s Head or the Pig’s Snout — I reckon they are cookers….
Still, some juices I make are single varietal, typically brighter and lighter in colour. Flavour can go from rich pear to mouth pucker. The blended style is typically darker, colouring deep down towards tangerine and terra-cotta, with a flavour complexity to at least match many young wines.
So now, and for weeks before and after, there are apples everywhere in my house. Dozens in bowls and boxes, adding a little linger of fruity dense sweetness ,always heading toward ferment, to the kitchen air.
Juicing is fine, but for best value, I find rough peeling, coring and then stewing dozens down to a small freezer tub works well. A sprinkle of lemon and brown sugar is all it needs, and I’ll keep it in the freezer for months, occasionally taking some out to use in desserts.
Apple rings too have been constructed, strung along the kitchen — be, gobbled too quickly by eager young ones!
Boxes of the biggest, best, unbruised apples are packed away into a shed too, to elongate the season of eaters still further.
And for the last two years, we’ve run an all-day apple fest in Cloughjordan! Here we have talks on everything from the apple as the Irish terroir food to community apple tree planting initiatives; we run apple identification walks, and — lucky me — I get to judge an apple pie competition!
This involves two tasting of each of the entries, however many there are. Soldier on I do, with my fellow judges, through the dozen or so entries until we find a bronze, a silver and a gold.
We also get in a larger juicer in from our friends and neighbours with the apple juice business — the Night Orchard. Up to 15 kg are juiced for each person for free — people come from a wide distance to have their varieties turned into a luscious golden liquid.
The next step, which is being broached on site in the ecovillage, is pasteurisation: otherwise, the juice is consumed in a couple of days — and that’s a lot of juice to drink!
I’m only learning as I go, like everyone else here in Cloughjordan. Each year, I try to add a little more to my apple knowledge and to my harvesting and use of these tasty round wonders. The same goes for our ecovillage — we’re learning too about how to get the best out of the fruiting trees we’ve surrounded ourselves with. One thing’s for sure, it’s a fun way to learn — and to find out that it’s a good thing for the Bloody Butcher to sit beside the Lady’s Finger, in a shed out the back of my house. Even if there’s the odd Cat’s Head thrown in for good measure.
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