Millgate Community Orchard Needs Pickers Again

Millgate Community Orchard Needs Pickers Again

The community orchard at Millgate is looking for volunteers for the apple harvest, which starts a fortnight earlier than usual this year.

There are about four hundred trees on the site, planted in stages since the orchard was set up on the old allotment ground, and roughly half of them are cropping. Left alone, most of it ends up on the floor.

When

Weekends from Saturday 12 September through to the middle of October, ten until about three, with a break in the middle that is taken seriously.

Weekday mornings are running too for anybody who can do them, though there are fewer people about and the work is slower.

What it involves

Standing in an orchard picking apples, mostly. There are ladders for the higher fruit and nobody has to go up one. Bring gloves if you have strong opinions about wasps.

Nothing is needed in advance and nobody is vetted, because it is an orchard and not a nursery. Under sixteens are welcome with an adult.

Where the apples go

About a third goes to the food bank, a third is pressed into juice which is sold to cover the orchard's costs, and the rest goes home with whoever picked it.

That last part is not a token amount. People leave with more apples than they know what to do with, every year, and every year they come back.

The pressing days

The two pressing weekends are the last in September and the second in October, and those are the ones to come to if you are bringing children.

There is a hand press. It is hard work and it produces roughly a glass of juice for a great deal of effort, which children find delightful.

Getting there

Off Millgate Road, past the leisure centre, gate on the left after the bridge.

There is no car park as such, so park considerately on the road and do not block the farm entrance. We will be up there on the first weekend.