The Appeal of Mrs Toogood

Amateur adventures in orcharding

  • Why You Should Always Wear the Right Shoes when Fleeing Witches

    As planned, this week’s post is a follow up to the critically unacclaimed Cider Making for Amateurs. Except it isn’t, because my demi-johns haven’t been delivered yet despite the fact that they were allegedly posted weeks ago. I’ve never let a lack of content stop me before though so I’m writing anyway. Plough on, dear Continue reading

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  • Under Lincoln Bypass

    Bypasses are odd things. I suppose as a pedestrian, I’m not really their target audience. To me, they feel like urban grumpiness made flesh/tarmac. They snake around cities that want to ward off gawkers and outsiders and are apparently prepared to pay hundreds of millions of pounds for the privilege. They’re not a modern phenomenon. Continue reading

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  • Cider Making for Weedy Amateurs

    Here’s a fascinating fact. Apples have so much natural yeast on their skins that if you leave them alone, they’ll just alcoholise themselves. That’s definitely true and proves that cider (hard cider to my American friends) is the natural way that God intended apples to be consumed. Probably. I’m fairly certain I read that somewhere Continue reading

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  • New Year’s Resolutions

    It’s the New Year and a boringly obvious time for reflecting on times past and planning for times future. If you don’t want to read my ruminations, come back next week for more of the traditional low-rent apple excitement. Sort of. I started writing this nonsense in 2019 which makes this the beginning of Season Continue reading

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  • The Great British Cake Up

    Last time out, my dad tried to say something nice about my ability to churn out blog posts when I’ve got nothing at all to write about. Well, hold onto your hat, father of mine. This one’s a doozy. Lockdown 2.0 means that I’m not allowed to make frivolous bus trips to Ticklepenny Lock until Continue reading

  • Next verse, same as the first

    Forest bathing reached a national audience this week when Chris Packham recommended it on Autumnwatch. If Chris says it works, the chances are that it does but, in the absence of other potential content, I think I’ll do a bit more research before I start recommending it to my impressionable nieces. It’s all very well Continue reading

  • Bathing at the Speed of Sound

    I really need to head off to Louth and have a look at my orchard. I’m starting to dream about predatory rabbits the size of horses and hallucinating fruit trees on every corner. Last week I found a rotten apple in the street and spent at least ten minutes scouring the neighbourhood. I was hoping Continue reading

  • Dreary Paperwork Interlude

    Last time out I mentioned that I had been considering but ultimately decided against doing a course in Creative Writing. That wasn’t entirely true. If I’m going to carry on writing, I’d quite like to learn how to do it properly. For reasons that are beyond me, Lincoln Uni offered me a place despite reading Continue reading

  • Happy Birthday, Louth Canal

    I’m lucky to have chosen a hobby that is so extensively supported online. As soon as I got home from Wragby, I set about the task of identifying the specimens I had brought back with me. Easy life. My first port of call was applename.com, an online repository of apple varieties. Input your apple’s defining Continue reading

  • Fuelled by Haslet

    For want of anything better to do with a fortnight of barely deserved annual leave, this week I decided to go apple hunting. I’m nearly two years in to this project and I’m yet to make any progress towards recovering Lincolnshire’s lost appley heritage. The list of missing varieties has about 40 entries but there’s Continue reading

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Years gone by

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About Me

I’ve been writing about orchards and Lincolnshire heritage apples for over five years and still don’t know my arse from my elbow. This blog is supposed to be an almost humorous record of my attempts to raise apple trees in a field just outside Louth. Mrs Toogood is just one of the lost varieties I probably won’t find.

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