Great response from Orchard Inventory feature on BBC website

October 9, 2018 by pie&crumble

Great response from Orchard Inventory feature on BBC website

People have been contacting us from people across Scotland to the feature on the Beeb website

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-40012732

Some wanted to ensure their orchard has been included, and others to volunteer for survey work. A few have been seeking advice about varieties and planning new orchards. We’re working through those now so we get back to everyone.

Biodiversity is one of the factors assessed in the National Orchard Inventory for Scotland

We worked with a BBC journalist to develop the piece, and to try and include as much of interest as possible from what the Inventory found . Of course the full story is contained in the Area Reports which are available to download. However the piece gives a good overview and its gets to a very wide audience. That has to be good for raising awareness about orchards in Scotland.

Merry Christmas and a fruitful New Year from Orchard Revival

December 16, 2016 by pie&crumble

We have made some amazing progress with our field surveys for National Orchard Inventory for Scotland this year. Many of our local facilitators and volunteer surveyors are still out there in the field, and in front of their computer screens, getting as much done as possible before we start writing the survey results up for our final report in March 2017.

We would like to thank all our collaborating organisations, local facilitators and their volunteers for all the hard work and enthusiasm – we could not have done it without you! We hope you get some well deserved rest and merriment over the festive period.

We thought we’d share a poem penned by one of the volunteers, and which to us sums up the essence of orchard mapping experience and the hopes for their fruitful future rather well. May we enjoy, protect and eat the fruit of our Scottish orchards for many years to come!

Apple Naming

(by Jane, first published on Tayport Community Garden blog here)

Lord Lambourne, James Grieve,
Charles Ross, Beauty of Bath,
Apples named.
Early fruit, fruit holding to branches in November late
Covering the whole season
With cookers and eaters
Green and smooth
Red and shining
Green and brown
Rough and sweet
Sour
Falling around the trees
Planted for love
“we love the blossom”
For hope
200 years ago, 31 years ago when we were young
“Cobnuts to remind me of my home”
In the South
They never fruited
“Life gets in the way”
But
Un-managed, unloved, surrounded by weeds and fallen fruit
The trees grow anyway
An orchard
Once you know it is there
Protect it
Enjoy it
Count the trees
Name them
Eat the fruit.

See you all in 2017!

Scottish Orchard Inventory needs your help with field surveys

October 13, 2016 by pie&crumble

Even the very young can join in! Here is Emma setting off for an orchard survey with her daughter.

A photo of a surveyor with a clipboard taking notes in front of an old apple tree trained onto a stone wall

We encounter some amazing trees and gardens!

A photo of a couple with a clipboard with the Garden in the background

PLANT survey volunteers at the Tayport Community Garden

A photo of a child holding an apple and smiling under an apple tree

Surveying can be fun for the whole family – young CLEAR Buckhaven surveyor in South East Fife (mum behind the camera;)

The Scottish orchard fruit season is in full swing just now – and along with it, our Autumn orchard surveys for the National Orchard Inventory for Scotland. It is a perfect time to get out in the field – the fruit on the trees makes is easy to tell your apples from your pears, and there is a good chance that you will get some to take home with you!

Do you think you may fancy joining in the fun? Our local collaborating organisations in the following areas are looking for additional survey volunteers right now:

Dumfries and Galloway – South West Community Woodlands Trust
Highlands – Transition Black Isle, West Ross Environmental Network and Nairn Orchard Group (we wrote about a sample of interesting orchards in the Highlands in an earlier post)
Perthshire – Comrie Development Trust and Carse of Gowrie Group: Orchards (also known as Historic Orchard Forum)
North East Fife – PLANT
South East Fife – CLEAR Buckhaven
North Aberdeenshire – we are still looking for the local collaborating organisation in this area – let us know if your group would like to get involved by filling our online form here.

You can put your name down for any of these areas through an online volunteer sign up form here. Full description of what is involved in becoming a surveyor can be downloaded from here (PDF).

We think it is a rather exciting way to get to know your local area and meet some lovely orchard keepers – and some very interesting trees! Survey volunteers tend to agree – here is they said about what they enjoyed the most about taking part in the surveys:

I’ve got so much more out of the survey than I ever could of imagined. Apart from discovering small pockets of countryside hitherto unexplored or driven past we have been lucky enough to meet a host of interesting and interested people with huge insights into local history and land use. The data entry is really not difficult I can only say positive thing about the survey and am so glad I signed up.

Cath, Clyde Valley Orchard Coop

I joined the Orchard Survey as a coordinator not expecting to do any surveying but as it turns out I have been able to go out into the field and discover some amazing orchards tucked away where you would never know they existed and have visited some grand properties that go with them too. It just shows you how much fruit there is growing in our country and a lot of it being unused, happily a lot of it is being used.

Rob, Sustainable Cupar

Nice to do something useful environmentally, fun to do with the kids.

Volunteer in the survey pilot in the Borders