Winter Activity

shades of grey - and shades of bonfires to come....

The colours are muted but there are signs of activity nonetheless.  Prunings and cut wands lying between the rows show that work has been under way for some time.

catkins are beginning to open up

On the lower bloc the wands have been stripped away from the base of the trees and top-pruning has just started.  That  blue flag on the third row shows where work begins next time.

just planted

Since nearly all the trees on the plat are of the one variety, namely 'Kent Cob' (or 'Lambert's Filbert, as it is also known),  I recently decided to introduce something different. This young tree is of the variety 'Cosford'. Because Kent Cob is not - according to the scientists - self-fertile, the plat relies mainly on the wild hazels in the hedgerows and others which are planted here and there on the plat. An additional pollinator can do no harm and will add interest. These two were supplied by the nursery Frank P Matthews Ltd of Worcestershire and Nick Dunn, Managing Director of the company, brought them along when he came to give a talk at the KCA Nutters' Supper in November.

Today the morning started out windy but dry but then the rain came on. No, that's not the sun or the moon in the picture below: just drops of rain on the camera lens.

sheets of rain!

Now it was too uncomfortable to dig another hole in the stony ground.  The second little tree must stay in its pot waiting for a finer day.  Meanwhile the first one is bedded in and fluttering its flag in the face of the weather.  

All is quiet on the plat; but will it snow tomorrow?  The forecasters say it might.

All quiet for now.

Autumn into winter

Saturday was a rare sunny day amongst the misty, murky days of recent weeks. The bright tints of late autumn were so attractive that I am posting a small photo gallery, just for the pleasure of it.

The few remaining leaves show up brightly against the nearly-bare branches.




In the hedgerows there are still a few beech leaves also providing colour.

On some branches the yellow and orange of lichen gives another bright note.

Lichen and late leaves

Turn and look the other way and winter seems well-established....

Not a leaf to be seen!

....although a gentle haze on the nut trees show where the catkins have been in place for some time.


At the back of the shed the 'bug hotel' is standing up well to wind and weather.

Has anyone told the bugs they can move in?

Two young trees are ready to be planted and will go in partly as pollinators for the Kent Cobs (which as we know are not self-fertile), and to add to the pollination provided by wild hazels around the plat.

These young trees are a variety called Cosford filberts

Wanding in the top bloc is well underway and, as tomorrow is the first of December I shall spend a hour or two on the young bloc - weather permitting!

Visit to Hurstwood Farm

In Mid November a group of us met at Hurstwood Farm for a visit to see how Kentish Cobnut Oil is made.

Cobnut trees make the backdrop as the group assembles

Our host, nut farmer (and piano-maker), Richard Dain received us warmly with tea and biscuits and he and his assistant, Catherine, gave a talk explaining how it all came about.

Cathrine, right, explains 

When his extensive apple orchards suffered irreparable damage during the Great Storm of October 1987 Mr Dain decided a wiser move would be to replant with cobnuts rather than with apples.  The idea for an oil press came later and, being an engineer by profession, he assembled the various parts, sourcing from Italy, Germany and using his own invention.

The barn where we sat doubles as a concert hall in summer

The resulting cobnut oil was entered for the Great Taste Awards of the Guild of Fine Food and at its first appearance won not just best in its category but overall winner. It was a great start and Kentish Cobnut Oil has gone from strength to strength since then.

Making oil from cobnuts is not simply a question of feeding the nuts into a machine and bottling the oil that comes out.  The process has many stages and we visited each in turn. First we saw the machine which makes boxes into which the bottles are packed for dispatch: different sizes for different numbers of bottles.

The machine will print boxes to suit your specifications

But before any of that what about the actual process of making the oil? First the nuts must be dried and the moisture reduced to a particular degree. Then the nuts are cracked and the shells separated from the kernels.  The kernels are fed into a hopper and thence into the pressing mechanism.

Nut kernals are drawn up the conveyor (right) into the hopper

Richard Dain controls the pressing mechanism

The resulting oil goes into containers and thence to the bottling plant.

Three bottles are filled before you can say 'nuts'!

There is another element of this machine which secures the bottles with sealed caps.

Securing the familiar and distinctive labels

 Finally the bottles are labelled and are ready to be packed into their boxes.










Hurstwood farm has thirty acres of cobnuts and another seven acres of walnut trees which will be made into walnut oil once the necessary machinery has been installed.  I think we would be willing guinea-pigs when it comes to  trialling it!


You can buy Kentish cobnut Oil from Hurstwood Farm at the Shipbourne Farmers Market
(Thursdays from 9 to 11 am).

I too have supplies and will be happy to take your orders: 

just phone 01732 761466

Harvest time

I finished my last post, by speculating that the harvest might be early and so it turned out.  We began on August 24th - a day later than planned owing to the writer being  caught out 'up a creek' (actually the river Roach on the East coast of Essex), not without a paddle but with wind and tide against us. But that is another story.

Some growers had begun picking their cobnuts ten days earlier but late August suited us fine.  I decided, with the help of willing volunteers to take care of the young bloc - some 200 trees roughly ten years old, with the main bloc going to Hurstwood Farm, the makers of Kentish Cobnut Oil ( www.cobnutoil.co.uk ).

cobnuts crated up

On 9th September 32 sharp-eyed pickers and the farm manager descended on the plat and stripped the golden clusters from the trees, leaving them bare in two and a half days.

two pickers to each row of nut trees

ready for loading

In fact the nuts were so advanced this year that a good shake of the trees brought most of them to the ground where they were quickly collected up.

ground hog?

The nuts were of good quality

passing inspection

The crates were loaded onto a trailer to be trundled back to the farm.

ready to roll

The main bloc had been taken care of but there remained plenty to do to harvest and market the young bloc. The plan was for these to be  sold 'by donation' to visitors at Ightham Mote where garden staff had set up a stall by the entrance to the property. So picking continued.

a dedicated nutter

Then the nuts were bagged up and weighed.

to be sold by the bag

calibrating the scales

A final effort was needed and, as the month progressed, the weather stayed dry and the nuts were falling off the trees it was a question of scrabbling around in the grass to retrieve them before the squirrels did.

'Got to get them all!'

The Apple and Orchard Day fairs took place in the garden of Ightham Mote on the last weekend of September and we were able to provide plenty of nuts for the cobnut stand..

Supermarket trays put to use

'Will we get any customers?'

The punters arrive

If any trees remained unpicked at the end of the month the will to carry on had evaporated and the squirrels were welcome to help themselves.  So ended the harvest season, in good time as October brought wind, rain and the arrival of autumn.

All quiet on the plat

June and July are quiet times on the plat; not a lot happens other than the grass grows and the nuts begin to swell.

Soon it will be time for mowing between the rows

Meanwhile, down at Ightham Mote the new brush-cutter has arrived - paid for by the funds raised at Waitrose and generously matched by the National Trust, at Ightham Mote.

'Have we got all the parts?'

 It comes flat-packed (sort of) in a box.

'Where does this bit go?'

photo-opportunity on the East Lawn

It did not take long to put it together and, once the mowing has been done at the end of July, the brush-cutter will be in action to deal with the brambles.

Although they may be hard to distinguish among the greenery of the leaves there seems to be a good crop of nuts coming along.  Will the harvest be early this year?  Possibly, after the mild and early spring.  Volunteers to help with the picking will be more than welcome.  Watch this space and bring a picnic.

Look carefully and you can see the nuts.

St Lawrence School visit - Part 2

After lunch there were more activities to get around:-

A time-line of the local heritage

When were the nut trees planted?

Ightham Mote started way back down the line

Identifying wild flowers

This one's called 'bugle'/

                                                                                 Examining another specimen

                                                     Building a hedge for bugs and beatles

Weaving skills

Getting it right

Storytime in the Secret Dell

Time to explore!

More stories

Looking at life on the forest floor

 The children were asked which activities they liked most; answers were varied but the Secret Dell got a lot of votes.

A big cheer for a great day

Time to leave the wildlife in peace.