CIDER HOUSE RULES
In a restored 17th-century Herefordshire mill, craft cider is being produced by a combination of pony power and a passion for tradition
Pye the piebald pony has a tummy ache. He may have eaten too much hay, gorged himself on the pile of glistening apples by the stable door, or have performance anxiety. For today this ten-year-old gypsy cob, who spends most of his time grazing on the Black Mountains, will be taking a central role in the cider-making on Hilary and Matthew Engel’s land.
Once a year in October, Pye is transported from his home, a few miles over the border in Wales, to work in a restored 17thcentury cider mill at Fair Oak Farm in Bacton, Herefordshire. Here, he is yoked to wooden shafts attached to a large stone wheel, and as he plods round and round, his muscular power easily crushes the fruit tipped into the trough by the bucketload.
“We didn’t have any farming experience when we moved here 20 years ago,” Hilary says, “so we leased the 75 acres of land to a tenant farmer while we concentrated on restoring the house and outbuildings. Through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, we also learned about coppicing and replanting hedges, and created a pond, which now attracts frogs, newts and bats.”
It was in 2011 that Chris Robinson, a carpenter renting the former dairy as a workshop, suggested it might be possible to get the cider mill and press working again. There are as many as 2,000 derelict mills in Herefordshire, dating to the era when every farmer made cider, which formed part-payment for the workers. With the bit between his teeth, Chris scoured salvage yards to find a replacement screw for the press, repaired broken joints and re-created missing wooden parts. He enlisted the help of Alan Mccardle, a care worker he had met through a folk-singing group in nearby Longtown called Two Tenners and a Fiver. “I was the restorer’s assistant,” Alan says. “Chris was the brain and I the brawn.”
Meanwhile, Hilary researched the history of cider-making in Herefordshire: “I tracked down an 80-year-old man, Eric Lewis, still living in the area, who was able to describe the original process. I read books, studied old photographs and visited every mill I could find.” Their hard work bore fruit and now, in a bartering system reminiscent of 17th-century practice, landowners donate apples in return for Alan maintaining their trees, putting in sheep from time to time to keep the grass down, and organising the harvest from July. Some apples are picked by hand, others with a shaker attached to a tractor and a sweeper for collection.
Once the fruit has been gathered from across the Golden Valley, it is washed outside the pressing shed in a three-metre-long tin trough resting on timber trestles, and any mouldy specimens are discarded on the compost heap – the remainder is graded for producing dry, sweet or sparkling cider. The varieties bear names more redolent of rural tradition than any foreign imports you’ll find in supermarkets: Foxwhelp, Kingston Black, Bulmer’s Norman and Dabinett are all grown within a ten-mile radius.
Today, during the pressing, Alan, who has experience of home brewing, is very much in evidence as general overseer. Dressed in a rubber cider-maker’s apron to protect his clothes from tannin, and a pork pie hat with a guitar thumb pick tucked into the ribbon band, as if he might at any moment launch into a wassailing song, he stands by the wooden press. As each batch of apples is pulped, he layers the aromatic mixture inside a squaremetre-sized hessian envelope, called a hair, as it was originally woven from horse hair. It’s not long before there are nine
or ten hairs in a block, called a cheese, within a wooden form. Alan then cranks down the heavy wooden beam that presses the hairs, releasing the juice into a bucket below. It is then siphoned into barrels to begin the fermentation process.
“From October until Easter, the cider develops and the sediment will fall to the bottom,” Alan explains. “Then we pump the partly fermented juice into clean barrels. By the end of August, most of the finished cider has been bottled, ahead of the new harvest.” The end product, the alcohol content of which is approximately 6.5% ABV (about half that of wine), is then sold as Fair Oak Cider at markets, shows and local shops, bearing Pye’s proud profile on the label.
In 2011, the first year of cider-making, it took three strong men to push the stone round the trough in the mill, with frequent rests: time-consuming, heavy labour. When, three years later, after contacting horse dealers and rescue centres without success, Hilary heard about Pye, she was eager to see how he would fare. “He had been trained to drive a trap, so the signs were good,” she says. “Strong and stocky, with legs like a Shire horse, he was also the required height – 12 hands – to fit into the low, dark space.” At his audition, he donned the collar and yoke like a natural and, with reassuring words from his owner, performed impeccably. This year is his fourth appearance and, as his reputation has spread, he always attracts a small crowd.
Today, union rules apply and Pye is given regular breaks for hay, water and grooming – he even has his own mane and tail de-tangler, lovingly applied by his owner, Wendy Lloyd, who seems to have horse-whispering powers. “If he doesn’t want to do the work, he won’t budge,” she says, remarking that his ears pointing forward means he is alert and engaged. He doesn’t wear shoes on his hooves because he lives on the grassy slopes of the Welsh mountain Twmpa (Lord Hereford’s Knob, in English), but for this annual event, sand is sprinkled on the mill’s stone floor to soften the surface, which bears the marks of numerous draught animals before him.
As Pye takes a break, the crowd standing outside in the crisp autumn air gratefully consume glasses of last year’s Fair Oak Cider. The sons of Hilary’s niece – Jonah, ten, Amos, seven, and Gabriel, three – race around the farmyard and into the mill, staring in wonderment at what’s taking place inside. To the adults, it’s barely less remarkable – a scene that would have been commonplace to their great-great-grandparents, one that recalls the rich history of the area while celebrating the magnificent produce grown within it.
Fair Oak Farm, Bacton, Herefordshire (01981 510250; fairoakcider.co.uk). The Engels will hold two cider-making events this year on 21 and 22 October. Donations go to the Laurie Engel Fund for Teenage Cancer Trust, in memory of their son, Laurie, who died of cancer aged 13. There are also two holiday cottages on the farm available to rent. Hilary is the author of Golden Valley Voices, which is available direct from her.