Hello & welcome to the homepage of Moorlands Farm Cyder & Apple Juice
We started 15 years ago from a green field site as a cattle farm, buying, selling & rearing calves & cattle which even though it went through the BSE crisis and foot & mouth also we kept going until the C.A.P (Common Agriculture Policy) reform made it impossible for us to make a living out of rearing calves for us to sell to other farmers to finish.
In September 2004 we decided to expand our caravan storage business to compensate for the decline in income from the beef farming. The caravan storage business thrived but something was missing....., we both missed farming and one morning, for some crazy reason, Rob decided to have a go at making some cider. A friend of ours had a lot of apples in his garden which he did not have any use for so we picked them, about 200kilos in all, but we didn't know what to do to make them into cider. This is when Rob remembered watching something about the Monks at Ampleforth Abbey making cider. As the Monastery was only forty miles away from where we live we decided to pay them a visit one afternoon in September 2008. We had a long and very informative talk with Father Rainer, who is responsible for the orchard and cider making at the Abbey, and left him armed with enough information and ideas about cider making to have a go.
From then on the 200 kilos of apples we had acquired were destined to become cider!
Over the next couple of weeks Rob made a press and bought a pulpmaster bucket to crush the apples, a few demi-johns, and a book about cider making. Off he went - Crushing, pressing, fermenting, storing and bottling about 90 litres of juice. With more good luck than management this cider turned out OK which really gave Rob a buzz so over the next few months he experimented with numerous varieties of apples until he hit upon what he considered was a good blend.
During this time a local Good Food Pub & Restaurant, The Star @ Sancton, (which is only one mile away) tried these different blends in the pub and most were well received which gave Rob the confidence to go into production.
In September/October 2009 he built a hydraulic press, an electric crusher and small bottling plant, bought large fermenting tank and storage vessels. With the apples he could obtain locally in East Yorkshire and some from Herefordshire he pressed nearly 5000 litres for the 2010 season. Moorlands Farm Cyder was launched onto the market in March 2010 and during the course of the year many of our customers in pubs, restaurants, farm shops, garden centres and tea rooms have enjoyed the taste of our Medium Sweet Cyder. The first year of production has culminated in the Moorlands Farm Medium Sweet Cyder being awarded the accolade of Champion Cider at the CAMRA event of East Midlands and Yorkshire Cider Competition 2010. By this time Medium Dry Cyder and Apple Juice had been added to the range.
2011 will see us go into another stage of development - more of this in our news page.
We hope this home page has been of interest to you and you can now look at the other pages with a little more knowledge of who we are and what we ultimately want to do - which is for you to enjoy the unique blends of cyder made in East Yorkshire.
If you are running an event E.G. Apple Day, Apple Fest ETC, and would like us to attend to give a talk or give a demonstration please contact us as soon as possible.
