2025 has been officially (?) designated a “mast year”. This is often described as a prolific harvest of nuts and fruits, when fruiting trees generally provide much more fruit than the natural fauna can consume. Generally they occur every 4 years but everyone seems to be in agreement that 2025 is a 30 year phenomenon.
Certainly for us it has been. Customers have been bringing their apples and pears to the farm since Late August and we have been pressing and bottling record amounts of apples. Over 25,000 bottles from apple brought to us and we are still booked solid for the next fortnight.
We still have our own fruit to press and so we now have to close the books to any more fruit arriving on the farm and keep our noses to the grindstone while we work our way through a record crop.
Many thanks to everyone who has had apples pressed by us this season. It is lovely to see the importance people hold in not letting their home grown crops go to waste. Growing food is such a basic requirement to maintain life and a skill and ability lost to many. There is nothing quite like the pleasure in self sufficiency.
Nature’s course may well result in a poor crop for 2026 but by bottling such large quantities ensures this crop will last for several years, if it is required to.
We hope to see many familiar faces again next year and until then, we hope you enjoy your apple juice.
