Small family farms are becoming a rarity across the industry, certainly in top fruit, so for a small grower to win the East Kent Fruit Society (EKFS) award Orchard of the Year in the annual competition is a notable achievement.
Andrew Parker farms 60 acres in the Weald of Kent with his wife Pam. Crowhurst Farm near East Peckham grows mostly apples with a 3 acre cobnut platt and a plum orchard. When the Parkers bought the farm 30 years ago it grew hops and over the years they have specialised in apples with about half the acreage in Bramley and a mix of Cox, Braeburn and Egremont Russet with some Gala going in this winter.
EKFS Members toured the farm last week to see for themselves why the three competition judges were so impressed. Out of 90 orchards entered, Andrew Parker’s six year old Egremont Russet Pony Field orchard got the highest marks when all the criteria were compared. Competition judge John Guest said “when we compared our marks this was the orchard that not only scored the highest overall marks but we all agreed showed consistency across the board.” Visiting growers were impressed with the consistency of tree management and crop size and quality across the whole farm. Andrew also won the best Bramley class and came third in the Most Commercial Orchard class with his Bramley on M27.
When asked for his secret Andrew Parker put much of his success with the winning Egremont Russet orchard down to having good balanced trees with feathers at exactly the right places from planting. Last year the winning orchard cropped at 40 bins per acre and he is conservatively predicting the same this year, however, his adviser Don Vaughan from FAST assesses this year’s crop at 50 bins per acre or more. The whole farm produces about 1800 bins per year which is marketed via Orchard World. At present 20 percent can be stored on farm but Andrew Parker is invested in new storage which will raise capacity to 40 percent for this year’s crop.
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