Chapter 5: Fruity Changes 🍏 🍐
April 2025
The season of spring is truly established now. Gorgeous green buds and shoots burst out with new energy. Bright primrose petals and carpets of wild garlic line the winding lanes. Tendrils of honeysuckle weave through the hedges and zingy green leaves unfold boldly from the branches. During these last few weeks at Rhuddin, it has actually felt more like Portugal than Powys! With solid sun day after day, working outside on south facing slopes has felt blissful. We have really appreciated the easy heat and the lift that sunshine brings. With vibrant clear views of the mountains around us, we have worked under blue blue skies to a soundtrack of busy excited bird song and the bleating of fresh young lambs. Working day after day to get them planted, mulched and guarded we have been relieved to get home to lovely sunsets, hearty protein rich meals and relaxing baths for aching muscles!
We planted our little surprise fruit trees just in time at the end of the window for bare root planting. We weren’t really planning on planting fruit trees this year but the universe in all its wisdom seemed to have other plans. And when offered with a selection of hardy hillside welsh apple varieties from a fairly local couple who were wrapping up the tree nursery side of their business, we just couldn’t resist.
I am sure I could feel each tiny tree’s delight, as they were greeted by worms in Rhuddin’s deep cool red soil, their little roots eager to reach in and get established in their new home.
And they could come to be quite a presence here. For every tree is a wonder, in its lifetime offering shelter and habitat for so many creatures both above and below the earth. Sequestering carbon, these fruit trees would also cover the patch with beautiful blossoms and in several years (they are very small now!) will provide fruit for us (and many other creatures) to enjoy. I sit and let my imagination fly off to the future, imagining beautiful guilds of pollinators, nitrogen fixers. and plants that would help repel pests and attract desirable insects in to the area. Little birds and mammals enjoying the dappked shade of their canopies. Rows of meadow and pasture in between to run “chicken and rabbit tractors“(more on this another day!) and possibly geese and goats in a regenerative system. I imagine it to be a beautiful place to wander through and enjoy.….
Now though I see canes and single wiggly central leaders standing small but hopeful in their guards in a mountain meadow. It’s definitely worth a try. Good luck little appley ones!
🍏 🍐🌱🌳
