Welcome To The Mahorall Farm Cider Blog

Well here is another posting to anyone who is vaguely interested...! This whole year has been hard work to say the least mainly due to the weather and plans not going as well as I would have hoped. There have certainly been upsides but it has been a bit of a slog on the whole.. We have however been pleased with the shows on the whole and we still have a few left to do on the run up to Christmas. One plus point is that the whole range of ciders have done remarkably well indeed and we have found it tricky to keep up. We are still unable to offer the whole range of ciders both through our retail outlets or online which is disappointing but it is a lot of work just keeping up with the demand from the shows particularly and the farm shop. We also have the situation that certain ingredients are finite as in the elderflower and also our damson crop has utterly failed this autumn.  Hay making has been hard work too trying to find a slot of decent weather. I planned to make 4 fields to...

Yes I am aware that it has been some time since I have posted.. to be honest I was very close to abandoning my little Blog for several reasons however if anyone is interested I have had a change of heart for the meantime.... This years spring and early summer has of course been quite hard work due to the weather. The farm has experienced falling water, moving water and standing water like never before... Luckily only a small amount of damage has happened as a result. I feel for the people who have really suffered. The farm track was ripped apart down to the foundations and we had several barns that flooded albeit only a small amount. I have never known the water table be so high. Below is a photo of the farm trail boardwalk which usually only has a trickle of water going underneath it. The plus side is that we have been very lucky with the shows due to a break in the weather. Ellesmere and Oswestry were a great success! We also went to an event at Battlefield farm shop at Shrewsbur...

I love this time of year! Not only is the countryside waking up with spring but we have summer to look forward to as well. Heck - lots of things going on and only some I can talk about freely !! The toilets have had the electricity supply uprated so there is now hot water for the sinks in both of them and also there is a shower too! I still have to do the tray and also the walls of the shower but that can come later. I have been spending a great deal of time in the barn and I am very pleased with the progress. It was however unfortunate that during the spell of the lovely weather we had, I was painting the inside of the beams right up in the top of the shed which was really hot, and the fumes from the paint did not help either. I have spent quite a bit of time installing a false wall at the back of the new 'Wagon Bar' which adjoins the main barn. With the addition of over 30 Wheel Back chairs from ebay it is taking shape and as time goes on it will get better and better. I am ...

2012... Not a great start to 2012. I was hoping for a gentle cushioned entry to the new year with the essence of a bit of relaxing and clearing of ones head. I had great Christmas time and also a fun new years eve around at some friends house. A couple of weeks into January and it all seemed to implode slightly. The van required a lot of work to get through the MOT which was an unfortunate surprise. It seems to have suddenly gone downhill. So the hunt is on for another van. This was a shame as we were wanting to have a whole load of bottling done and deliveries etc. The discovery's head gasket blew at the same time and I also had to wade through my accounts to submit my tax return for the end of January. I never find January an easy month as the days are of course quite short and the countryside while sometimes it can look great in the winter is usually quite drab and dirty. It should be a time for us to regroup and do lots of planning. We have started to book a few shows for the f...

Well at last we have finished making cider for another year. It has been an unusual and somewhat challenging cidermaking time for us for various reasons. The local apple crop did not do particularly well despite reports nationally that it was a bumper year for apples. Lack of rain throughout the year saw a marked decrease in size of fruit. One orchard owner which we have had apples off over several years let us down badly. Despite the communications we had concerning the time of when we were going to come and pick it them up, we phoned them up to inform them we going to come in the next few days and they said it was fine... THEN they rang back to say that someone had already picked them... astonishing behaviour. When I said that we had contacted them etc and their come back was 'well I can't change the past can I???' Errr no sir but you do remember the past. We move on... Anyway we are pleased with our slight tweak to the cider making process which has made it a lot easier ...

Well we have now got a couple more ciders available in bottles. Damson and Elderflower and also the long awaited Mahorall Mulled Cider! We are extremely pleased with how our new bottled ciders are being received and it was well worth the rigmarole of sorting out labels, bottles, caps etc. We are particularly pleased to be able to offer our Mulled Cider in a bottle. It is always been very popular when we prepare it at the shows that we do over the winter and once you have had a taste then your hooked. Having a nightmare with trying to suss out building the online shop for the website.. its a lot more difficult trying to build one yourself. I am hoping however to be able to crack it in the next couple of weeks in time for the christmas market. We have started cidermaking for 2011 ! Everyone assumes we should have started ages ago but they fail to realise that the season dictates when we start and more importantly the apples have to be ripe so the natural sugars are at their maximum. The ...

And it just keeps getting busier! We have been to quite a few shows over the last 4 weeks and we have been on the whole very pleased indeed with the results. We have been to Far Forest show, Minsterley, Bridgnorth, Acton Scott, Ludlow Food and Drink, TCHT Autumn Fayre and also a show at Attingham Park! Ludlow Food and Drink is the biggest show that we go to and also handily enough one of the closest! We had 8 different ciders on offer at Ludlow and we launched our new cider too! Cider and ginger is the latest offering from Mahorall Farm and it is always good to test drive a new cider at a show as you you get first hand reaction of what people think. Well we ran out of our new cider and ginger twice! Excellent reaction and we are now planning to continue it and put into a bottle. Lots of things happened at Ludlow including yours truly being interviewed by a Sky cooking channel, our cider being used as an ingredient in a Shropshire Fidget pie, our largest transaction at a show so far and...