This Farming Life - November

There are a lot of apple trees at Castlefarm and Jenny Young explains what they do with the excess fruit.

At Castlefarm we have two orchards beside our house. The old orchard was planted by Peter’s grandparents nearly a century ago. The newer orchard was planted by Peter and I during the winter of 2007. We received a small REPS grant to plant this orchard of 26 trees. We sourced old Irish apple varieties from Seed Savers.

The result of having two orchards at Castlefarm is that we often have too many apples. I sell some apples through the farm shop. I also make preserves, apple tarts and even small amounts of home brew cider. This November’s Wild and Slow Festival in Macreddin gave me inspiration to make Bramley and rosehip jelly. But we still have excess and we don’t like to waste good food. Our solution for excess apples is to pool then together with 3 other local farmers. We bring them down to The Apple Farm in Tipperary. Here Con Traas transforms our apples into juice.

We sell a small amount of our apple juice through the farm shop but we enjoy most of it ourselves. Bottles become Christmas gifts to family and friends. We also drink hot spiced apple juice over the winter while thinking of the New Year when the weather will warm up and apple blossoms will again appear on the apple trees, in the orchard and the cycle starts again.

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This November Castlefarm Shop is open 10am-6pm Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th. You are welcome to join us for egg collecting on 2.30 on the Saturday. We will have our new season’s apple juice on sale at Castlefarm Shop this November and December.

Castlefarm Shop opens the last Friday and Saturday of each month from 10am until 6pm. To receive our newsletter, news of new products & cooking tips by email please contact Castlefarm Shop, Narraghmore, Athy, Co Kildare, Telephone 087 678 5269, Email jenny@castlefarmshop.ie, log onto www.castlefarmshop.ie or telephone +353 (0)59 863 6948

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