This is going to be a very very good year for apples.
 
It's amazing how well apple trees can produce in a drought year, provided they have been trained to cope with a drought.  If you've been drip watering them for years then they come to rely on that.  If you haven't then they just press on. 
 
Add to that, most apples are biennial (produce good crops every second year) and this is our year.
 
Cider production started this year with Organic Apples - Multiple Heritage varieties and we're fermenting that very special juice separately so that we can create a well-blended very flavoursome "special" cider. 
 
This month we hand picked most of those apples, working our way up and down the orchard, collecting good quality windfalls, apples directly off the trees that were too small to sell for eating apples, or slightly bird damaged.
 
Now I don't know if people think that picking apples is a relaxing past-time, vaguely glamorous maybe, very rustic.
 
I suppose it is - but you also have to take into account we were picking out there in the middle of an orchard, in the middle of a massive windstorm that swept through Melbourne suburbs and caused a lot of damage - we thought it was a bit windy - talk about daft!
 
And then there were the days that we had no choice but had to pick during the day - we tried as much as possible to do it early mornings and late afternoons, but for a few days when if the apples are ready, they are ready and there's not a lot you can do about it.  Plus if you leave them for too long on some of those stinking hot, 40+ celsius days the poor things cook on the trees!  So we cooked instead.
 
Anyway, future stories we'll include some photos from the orchards - as soon as somebody with the camera can remember to download them somewhere and then send them to the somebody who is managing this website.
 
Probably after we've run out of apples to pick and cider to nurse.