This afternoon Maureen and Kate took some wee explorers out to scope out the land our new orchard will be planted on.  There was lots of long grass- it was a bit like being on a bear hunt! We looked at where it would be good to put some apple and pear trees and maybe a few fruit bushes.  We explored the back of the plot, under the trees, where the bee hives will go and we looked at the kinds of flowers they might be able to make honey from.  There were buttercups and speedwells but not much else.  We think we will need to plant some flowers for the bees!  We found out that you could tell if someone likes butter by holding a buttercup under their chin and seeing if their chin turned yellow.  We had lots of fun with this!

It was fun to explore while the ground is very overgrown. Oliver found a protractor for measuring angles that someone must have dropped.

Work is going to begin on creating an orchard on the land in September next year, and we have taken some “before” pictures to put at the start of a book we might make about all the building of our orchard.

The ladies are particularly enthusiastic about the apple press that we might buy for the creation of apple juice from our own homegrown apples. I wonder why!?