Archive for countrytalkandtips.myfreeforum.org ........................ smallholding, crafts and country life ................................................... IN IRELAND .......................................................
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GB
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pick your ownLooking for a pick your own orchard in the southwest. My little orchard wont be ready for much more than one or two fruits in years  but I want more than the shops sell.
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chook
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Hi GB,
can't help with an actual "pick your own" but it may be worth just asking around locally. In the course of my REPS work I keep coming across trees that are not being harvested (or looked after in any way for that matter). You wouldn't know they are there until you start walking every field.
The other day at the Kilfenora Organic Fair I had brought some of our first decent crop of Conference pears along, being rather pleased with myself as it has taken 7 years of nurturing to get to this point, and then a friend looked at them and said "oh, I have a big old tree full of those, don't know what to do with them all, they are just falling down" 
I'm sure had she brought a box of them along they would have sold like hot buns...
The best time to find such trees is in late April/May when they are in flower. Make a note and go back in the autumn. Actually, they are best spotted from the elevated height of a Bus Eireann bus  . It's amazing how many of them are tucked around old farmsteads and even in hedges.
chook
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GB
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I did find a wonderful old tree of gods only know what kind of apple - small yellow green stay on the branch when the leaves all fall off kind - but its on the wrong blasted side of a river which in my younger days I would have gone through no problem but being older and wiser (and much more unfit  ) dont care to try to scramble down and through and up again out of. I will keep looking though, but a pick your own place would be a nice compromise
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