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Feeling Fruity
Ribston Pippin. Ashmead's Kernel. Irish Peach. St Edmund's Pippin. Wyken Pippin. Dutch Mignonne, Catshead, Boston Russet, Sturmer Pippin and Reinette Grise.
These are some of the rare varieties of apple eco-commentator George Monbiot has been planting, or hopes to plant, on his land in mid-Wales. He has, he says, become a fructivist and is determined to show British shoppers what they're missing by munching imported fruit rather than buy varieties which can thrive in the British climate. Monbiot has worked out that he can eat ripe British fruit all year round by planting varieties which ripen at different times (though he admits you need a decent plot of land to do so). You can do your bit to preserve a number of almost-forgotten fruits if you try the same.
Also,
"It's not just the produce I love. When you start growing fruit, you enter a world of recondite knowledge, accumulated over centuries of amateur experiments. You must choose the right rootstocks and pollinators and learn about bees, birds and caterpillars. But above all you must learn patience. Growing fruit forces you to think ahead, to imagine a sweeter future and then to wait. Perhaps it is this, as much as the forgotten flavours, that I have been missing."
EURSOC must be getting old. He agrees with every word in a George Monbiot column.
