14-09-2019, 09:28 PM
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Thatcher's cider farm
Today was Thatcher's Cider Farm open day.Other fermented apple juice providers are available.
Production stops completely ever year for pressing blackcurrents to make Ribena. It takes a month to clean the plant afterwards, which apparently looks like a mass murder scene after the process finishes.
I started my tour of the farm with a track-er royde round the orchards, totalling 500 acres in all, but not all attached to the main farm. My apologies for the prat in a hat and glasses hogging the bottom right of the pic.
The orchards have different varieties that ripen at different times to give a harvesting period of about three months.
Can you spot the deer? I had a fraction of a second to take the shot but no amount of cropping and zooming will give anything live a decent image of the animal.
The only place where photos were allowed inside, the vat hall. Varying between about 80 000 and 135 000 litres, the newest is about 150 years old.
A trailer load of apples ready to run through the new wash-plant. One acre of orchard will produce about twenty tonnes of apples which in turn will yield about 80 000 pints of cider.
Singists, The Southern Sons. They were quite good.
Roll out the barrel.
On site security. Don't mess with The Morris!
The trees are first shaken then stirred. After that, an apple picking machine harvests the fruity gold.
Local Heroes on standby.
In order to ensure year round production from a three month crop, apple juice is stored for the rest of the year at a constant temperature. Each vat holds about 45 000 litres.
The village pub is owned by the Thatcher family.
The pub gets its name from the Strawberry Line that used to run nearby, although it's unlikely that mainline engines like this one ever ran on the local line.
After this, I went for a walk along the Strawberry Line, which will be the subject of another indulgent thread.
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