OUR two little villages Hanley Castle and Hanley Swan near Malvern are undergoing an apple apocalypse!

Let me explain, in 2013 a 85-year old villager, Vera, donated her small orchard to the village of Hanley Swan as a community orchard, as she could no longer pick the apples nor eat them. A group of volunteers picked the apples, a local fruit farm juiced and bottled them at cost, and we sold the 300+ bottles in six weeks as the juice came from apples of old English varieties (eg Peasegood Nonsuch) and were on 30+ year old trees that had never seen pesticides or fertilisers - and neither had the soil they grew on - and was subsequently mind-bogglingly delicious... We did the same last year...

But this year was different: this year a handful or so of villagers who had two or three apple trees each asked if we would take their apples too, of course we said, though it would have to be separately bottled.

So a week ago we did the picking: Saturday for the Little Orchards of the Hanleys; and Sunday for Vera's Orchard.

We delivered them (in two separate batches) to be juiced... we now have 742 bottles of Vera's Orchard juice and 690 bottles of juice from the Little Orchards of the Hanleys and their Environs. A total of 1,432 bottles of apple juice!

Even if we sell a bottle of juice to every man, woman, child and babe in arms in our villages we won't sell it all...

So we need the good folk of Worcestershire who appreciate an excellent apple juice and wish to support a community enterprise (all profits go to supporting our community orchard) to buy it!

Our juice will be available for tasting (and buying) at tomorrow's Hanley Community Cafe and Market from 10am to noon at Hanley Swan village hall. Or you can email your order to hanleyscafeandmarket@gmail.com or call 07709 500574.

VAL FARE