Good afternoon,

This Saturday is the first of our four swapping Saturdays and we’re really looking forward to kicking the apple season off.

Lots of you have been patiently waiting, watching as the fallen fruit carpets your gardens with greens & reds and the smell of soft apple draws in the fruit flies. Well, thank you for bearing with us. There are a few reasons we don’t start swapping until this point in the season, and mainly it is to do with the ripeness of the fruit and this year a lot of fruit has dropped before it is ripe.

In order to turn apple juice into cider, we ferment the fruit sugar into alcohol. If the fruit isn’t ripe, the starch won’t have turned into sugar and starch won’t ferment so, unripe fruit, cider will not make.

We’ve held on and we now hope the fruit that will come to us over the next four weeks will be delicious and perfect for Silly Moo Cider. We have iodine drops at the farm and you are welcome to test the ripeness of your apples to be sure.

We ask that you only bring us fruit that is good enough to eat - clean, unsprayed and without mould or broken skin. The odd bruise or blemish is fine. Anything other than this can be fed to the cows and chickens, but I’m afraid we won’t be able to pay for it with cider.

We’re looking forward to seeing you and your fruit on Saturday.

Lunch?

We’re serving 24-hour cooked brisket buns and mushroom buns for lunch on Saturday and booking is advised, although there will be some spare for walk-ins.