Apple juice for breakfast
One of the direct consequences of working towards GTBS accreditation is that we have become much more aware of how much waste we produce by monitoring it on a weekly basis.
We knew that we didn't send much to landfill, because we recycle and compost as much as possible, but what we hadn't realised was how much of what we did send was made up of orange skins (we squeezed oranges every morning for breakfast). Orange skins accounted for at least half, often much more, of the total weight.
We started weighing waste from the middle of October 2007, when visitor numbers were lower, but extrapolating the figures recorded in the following six weeks, we calculated that during the summer months we were sending up to 24kg of orange skins per month to landfill. Composting anything but a tiny proportion of this ourselves is not possible, as the skins are too acid, and take too long to decompose.
The first thing we did was call our local municipal waste centre, who agreed that we could add the skins to their garden waste bin. This seemed like a reasonable solution, until someone very sensibly asked "Why don't you serve apple juice instead ?" This was a perfect 'can't see the wood for the trees' moment. We had been so wrapped up in trying to solve the problem of serving fresh orange juice while minimising waste that we hadn't considered the obvious alternative.
The Tamar Valley was full of orchards up to the 1800's, and was home to many varieties of fruit that had been bred to succeed in the local climate, most of which had names that have now been mostly forgotten. Small examples of these orchards are still in existence, and interest in the old varieties is growing, with a number of people recording their details and propagating them to make sure that as many as possible survive. Cotehele House have created created a mother orchard of several hundred varieties for exactly this purpose.
With such a rich resource on our doorstep it seemed crazy to continue squeezing oranges that had been flown halfway round the world.
We now buy a pure apple juice from Green Bank Apples, who press their own apples and those from nearby orchards, just a handful of miles away down the valley. Many of the fruits are unnamed, and their juicing qualities are unknown until they are squeezed. Most apples brought to the press are in small volumes, and mixed together. This means that each pressing generates a slightly different juice every time, and means that what we serve will vary during the year, giving you a truer flavour of the area you are staying in.
