Country diary: a log of apple crops from our orchard spans the decades

Allendale, Northumberland: The early entries are in the erratic lettering of an old typewriter, then in my mother’s blue ink, and lastly some in my teenage handwriting

The sun’s already up and the camomile edging the path is covered in dew. Droplets trickle down the reddening apples on our young tree, “Winston”, self-fertile and a good doer for the north. It’s a bountiful year in our valley, thanks to the cold, late spring and a lack of frost at blossom time. Thrushes scrabble, frantic among bird cherry branches, these wild fruit trees laden with little black berries. Pears ripen on the tree by the house wall and wasps cluster on eaten-out plums.

Apple trees have good and bad years. I take down the Orchard Book from my childhood garden; its records go back to the 1950s. There’s the smell of old paper and its cover is mould-speckled and torn. A fabric-covered ring binder costing 3 shillings and 9 pence, loose threads dangle along its cracked spine. The early entries are in the erratic lettering of an old typewriter, then in my mother’s blue ink, and lastly some in my teenage handwriting.

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