Nature's bounty continues to astound

The year 2025 will forever be known as the Year of the Plum at Orchid Meadows. We've been weighed down with delicious Victoria plums, small yellow plums, small red plums, damsons and now the latest offering: sloes. Catching the late summer sun in Cors Caron Fach nicely, the sloes are bulking out fast and thick and our thoughts are turning to sloe jelly and gin in time for Christmas.

Traditionally sloes - the fruit of the blackthorn shrub - are picked once the first frost has softened them a little. We have a work party of volunteers coming later in the autumn to produce apple juice and, frost permitting, we hope we'll be jellying too.