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Growing Orchard Communities Project

What We Did

The Growing Orchard Communities project linked community orchard groups to the wider support network of Orchard Link and ran from November 2015 – October 2017. It was delivered by Orchard Link in partnership with the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty team.
In total £86,800 of funding was secured, including a grant of £40,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Other funding was secured through the Langage Landscape Fund, South Devon AONB Sustainable Development Fund, Orchard Link funds, Devon County Council locality grants and private sector funding.

Orchards in our landscape

Orchards are a distinctive feature of the South Devon landscape. Almost every farm had an orchard to provide cider, juice, cooking and eating apples for the family, workers and the wider community. 60% of England’s orchards have disappeared since the 1950s. In Devon, the figure is higher still at 90%.

This project has tackled this issue by working with volunteer community orchard groups to improve their skills and expertise in order for them to safeguard the ongoing good management of existing orchards in their parishes. We also worked with them to help them to better engage their communities to engender a sense of ownership of these important shared spaces in their villages.

Apple Day celebrations, Newton and Noss community orchard group

The project has been hugely successful with thousands of people enjoying the fruit of the community orchard groups labours! The sites are now well managed by 23 groups of skilled and enthusiastic volunteers, with action plans to take them forward for the next 5 years. They are thriving with the support of their communities and each other, as well as the wider Orchard Link network.

23 community orchard groups from across South Devon have been part of this exciting project. The project was launched at Sharpham House and community orchard in November 2015

Feed the trees event, Cornwood and Lutton community orchard
The project was made up of 2 main strands of work – community engagement and landscape enhancements.

The Orchard Communities

The orchard groups we worked with all wanted to involve more people from their local communities in looking after and enjoying their orchards, as well as ensuring that their members had the skills needed to ensure that their orchard sites were healthy and well managed.

We ran a programme of workshops, training, networking and skill sharing events throughout the project. These were attended by just over 550 volunteers, who are now using these skills and knowledge to help members of their own communities find out more about their local orchards.

We set up a network of community orchard volunteers who can now support each other in growing their own community orchards. We also worked with Orchard Link to help them better support their community orchard members.

We worked with 5 core groups who received some extra funding to run events to encourage people from their community to get involved in their orchards. Their learning and experiences have been written up as case studies, shared in the new orchard Link website. Altogether the five groups put in 228 volunteer days organising and planning 56 events. A further 403 volunteer days were put in to help run the events, which were attended by 1636 people from the local communities.

Some of the groups made apple songs and films with the local community to help raise awareness of their sites.

Listen to the song
Watch the film
Each of the five core participating groups recorded its experiences as a case study.
Dartmouth Community Orchard
Download
Huxhams Cross Community Orchard
Download
Newton and Noss Community Orchard
Download
Stokenham Parish Community Orchards
Download
Totnes Community Orchards
Download
New sign for Beeson community orchard, made by the volunteers

The Community Orchards

The continued good management of these community orchards is vital to the success of this project. As well as equipping the volunteers with the skills they need to look after the sites, we also helped them to write simple 5-year management plans and provide site specific expert advice and mentoring. They were also able to draw down a small site improvement grant to carry out some of the works identified in their plan.

The Results

This project has helped orchard groups to look after their sites as important and enjoyable resources for their communities. The total volunteer contribution (as specified by HLF guidance) made to the project totals £137,150 and is equivalent to 1283 volunteer days. These volunteers ran events in their community orchards which were attended by 2501 members of the community.
Celebrating Fruitfulness network day, Holbeton community orchard
This project has been a great success, we have worked with hundreds of people, from local residents, orchard volunteers and school children, to cooks, artists, keen amateurs and friendly experts!

GOC Project Archive

You can find videos and pictures of the GOC project on YouTube and Flickr.

Photos from Flickr :

GOC Project Workshop Pictures

You Tube: Videos made at the end of the project:

GOC Finale Film
GOC Evaluation

Apple Press: You can also see back copies of the Apple Press – our GOC newsletter

Apple Press Archive

OL Evaluation Report: You can read more about the project in our

Evaluation Report

How to submit a listing

Location, location, location

Harvestline is primarily designed as a service for members of Orchard Link in and around Devon to enable them to buy, sell, source or exchange apples. We are happy, however, in order to support the wider apple and orchard communities in the South West and contiguous apple counties (Hertfordshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset) to also open it for individuals, professional growers and small orchard owners who are offering or selling apples. Non members of Orchard Link looking to offer or sell apples are welcome to submit a listing.

Individuals looking for apples should contact those offering or selling apples direct without posting.

Do not fill in the form if you live outside or your apples are located outside the specified area above as the posting will be rejected automatically.

Be accurate

Please read through the instructions and craft your post carefully giving full details as this will lessen the post being rejected as posts that do not have sufficient details or which do not have an email address will be automatically rejected.

Please fill out the form in full, giving as much information as possible. Please list the varieties if you know them or, failing that, say if the apples are ciders, cookers or deserts or a mixture. The more information you can provide, the better your chances are for success. As well as your region, in particular please give a postcode or the nearest town to where your apples are located. Please include how much you might want per ton or sack if you are selling, or set to zero if you simply need the apples collected.

Orchard owners may not be looking for payment for their apples; but our experience is that most will. For those of you looking at our listings to try to find apples, please remember Orchards are an important resource in the general environment and many have been lost over the last few years, payment gives a little income for orchard owners to help maintain their orchards and helps the surrounding environment.

Keep us in the loop

If you are successful with your post please inform info@orchardlink.org.uk so that your post can be deleted. This will mean individuals will not get unwanted calls or emails. Individual posts will be deleted 60 days after posting, unless you expressly email us within that time to retain it on the site. All posts will be deleted when the listings close at the end of the season (usually the first week in December).

Some important small print

The information you give in the form will be made visible on this website page, so please only provide details that you are willing to have in the public domain. Orchard Link’s role is simply to provide space on this noticeboard for your listings. We do not verify any of the information provided or make any claims about quality, quantity, value or arrangements. Orchard Link plays no part in any agreement or contract that might be made and will have no role or liability in any subsequent dispute.

Here is your step-by-step guide to booking Orchard Link equipment.

Welcome to the 2022 Hire Season! All prospective hirers must read this guide in full before making a booking: it contains important information and updated Terms and Conditions of hire.

You have to be a member of Orchard Link to hire our equipment and get access to the hire system. If you need to join then follow this link. Note that the named hirer must be an Orchard Link member and must be present and supervising the use of the equipment on the hire day.

We have a range of different sized presses for extracting the juice, electric mills (for pulping apples) and pasteurisers. When you book a press, it is provided as a complete ‘kit’ with the mill, press, pasteuriser and various buckets and accessories. A full list of equipment is provided as a .pdf download for each kit. You will need to provide a safe electricity supply for the mill (240V supply capable of handling a 2.2Kw load) and a good supply of water for cleaning the equipment after use.

Our hire area is south Devon, between Exter and Plymouth, and south of the A30. We do not accept bookings from outside that area. A schematic map is here.

When you are logged in as a paid Member, this link will take you to our availability calendar to show you when the equipment is free. If you click on the confirmed hires shown for the dates immediately before and after your preferred date, a pop-up box gives you the contact and location information of the hirers which is helpful in indicating where the equipment will need to be collected from and returned to – although this will change as more people make bookings around the same time.

Once you have decided which equipment kit suits you best, click on the “Go to Booking Page” button on the Hire page. This will take you to our on-line booking system run by SimplyBookIt.

The link takes you to a list of the equipment available where you make your choice, then to the calendar showing the availability of that particular piece of equipment. Equipment is hired by the day: find a day that is free, select it and you will be led through the booking process. Note that you must make your booking at least two days in advance of your hire date. If you cannot select the date you want, that means it is already booked for that day.

If you want to hire equipment for more than one day, you add more and pay just once at checkout. Simply select “Add another booking”. The system then goes back to the equipment select page and you run through the booking process again. The booking system will remember your contact details for successive bookings but you will need to enter the location for each separate element.

Finally you will be transferred to our PayPal page to make a payment using your debit or credit card or using your PayPal account if you have one. When making a booking, you must complete the payment within 15 minutes, or your session will time-out.

(Note that the “Pay Later” option on the payment page is only for organisations which have agreed an invoicing arrangement with us in advance: any unauthorised booking made using “Pay Later” will be cancelled when seen).

On completion, you will receive an e-mail message confirming your booking. If you do not receive the confirmation email, your booking has not completed. Please read your confirmation email thoroughly and keep it for reference as it contains essential information which you will need at the time of hire.

Your confirmed booking, together with your email, mobile phone number and location will show up on the hire calendar. Only logged in Orchard Link members can see this information. (See our Privacy Policy).

Given the high value of the equipment hired out without deposit, members hiring for the first time will be required to provide proof of address (the membership registered address) before a booking is confirmed. Send a scan or photo of a current Council Tax bill or a recent (3 months) utility bill to presshire@orchardlink.org.uk when the booking is complete. If you omit to do this, we will remind you, but the booking will be cancelled up to a week but no less than 72 hrs before it is due if this is not received.

Our equipment is all based at our store (click here for map) outside Ugborough, near Ivybridge. But at the height of the harvest season when the equipment is in almost daily use, the equipment passes directly from one hirer to the next. So, you will EITHER need to collect your equipment from our store, OR, if another member has the equipment on hire immeditately before you, you will collect it from the previous hirer.

At the end of your hire, you will EITHER need to return the equipment to our store at Ugborough OR, if another member is using it immediately after you, that person will collect it from you.

The system only works if everyone arranges the collection, return and transfer of the equipment through good communication with the hirers before and after them, or if to/from Ugborough, with our volunteer depot manager George Arnison. The booking confirmation email contains all the information necessary to do this.

A simple flowchart to guide you can be downloaded here.

If another member has booked your equipment for use the following day, you must have it fully cleaned and ready for collection by the next person by 6.30pm at the end of your hire day.

After you have passed on the equipment to the next hirer or back to the store, you must email Presshire to inform us where the equipment is then located. Please note that if you have not done so then you will retain responsibility for any subsequent loss or damage until we are next notified of any subsequent handover.

If you simply want to change the date of your booking, and provided there are more than 7 days to go to your booked date, first check on the calendar that your preferred new date is available for that equipment, then email us requesting the change. (This avoids the need for cancellation, refund and re-booking from scratch).

If you need to cancel your booking completely, please do so as soon as possible using the unique cancellation link provided in your booking confirmation email. This will cancel your booking instantly and maximise your chance of a refund. If for some reason you cannot do this, then email your cancellation to us at Presshire.

Refunds and cancellation charges:

  • If you cancel your booking within two days of hire start for any reason: no refund.
  • If you cancel your booking within seven days of hire start: 50% refund.
  • If you cancel your booking more than seven days before hire start: 100% refund less a £5 admin fee.


Any refunds will be made through the PayPal account that made the initial payment. However, if the inital payment was made by credit or debit card (rather than through a Paypal account) then the refund can only be done by BACS which will take longer. If you paid by card, and you cancel, please ensure you supply full bank details for BACS transfer.

We provide instructions for the safe use of the equipment on our website hire page and in paper format with each kit. Do read and follow those instructions! You are working with expensive professional equipment involving heavy weights, sharp blades, mains electricity and water. An instructional video for the Speidel 2,2kW Apple Mill is available here.
You must tell us and the next hirer straight away if there are any defects, breakages or losses.
Hiring members are responsible for ensuring all those using the equipment are fully briefed on its correct operation before use and are supervised throughout the hire period.

Care of equipment.

Hirers are required to use the equipment strictly in accordance with the instructions provided and to pass it on in clean and operable condition.

Losses and breakages or theft.

Hirers must check the equipment on receipt to ensure everything is present and working correctly. If there are any losses, breakages or malfunctions or any equipment is lost through theft, you must notify Orchard Link, the previous and the next hirer straight away. Orchard Link will not accept responsibility for loss of hired equipment time, caused by failure to notify of a known loss, break or malfunction. To be fair to all hirers, in the event of damage or loss caused by misuse, failure to follow the operating instructions, or mistreatment, or if you fail to report a loss or damage you are likely to be liable for any additional costs and you may lose your opportunity to hire the equipment again in the future. You are responsible for the safe custody and reasonable precautions against theft whilst the equipment is in your care.

You remain the hirer of the equipment, with all attendant liabilities, until you notify us that you have passed it on to the next hirer or have returned it to the depot.

Insurance.

Orchard Link has its own third party insurance, but this does not cover you for your use, loss, damage or theft of the equipment while out on hire nor, if you are organising an apple pressing event involving other people or the public generally, does it cover you for any claims against you. You must therefore ensure that you have suitable occupiers’ and public liability insurance of your own to cover your use of the equipment.

If you have a query about your booking or the equipment which is not covered here or by the detail of your confirmation email, please email us.