This is a very special apple that’s origin is in Callington, only a stone’s throw from here. Its main use is cider and it’s certainly very sharp. It’s called Pig’s Snout. There are several apple varieties being sold under the name “Pig’s nose” or “Pig’s snout” from several different counties but most don’t look anything like a pig’s nose…unlike this beauty, which is from the Callington Pig's Snout!

Our tree was planted in our big tree-planting drive a few years ago and of all of the ones we planted, this has been the most successful. The tree actually looks like a fully-fledged apple tree and for the second year in a row it’s covered in apples. We didn’t get to use the apples last year because we got scrumped before we could pick them ourselves. That’s the disadvantage of having a public footpath across our land, it means that people think that our “produce” are their fair game and we fairly regularly get people helping themselves to our blackberries and now our apples too.

A couple of days ago, Margaret (my mother-in-law) came into the house with two of the apples to show me – one got used in a salad earlier this evening and the other was sitting on the table after everyone else had gone to bed. We’ve got visitors, our good friends Janet and John and after a three-course meal and copious quantities of wine, followed by much chewing of fat to celebrate John’s 60th birthday, this was the best I could manage. I write this the morning after the night before and the empty bottle tally is the highest we’ve achieved in some time…no wonder I feel like someone removed my brain overnight.

Maybe this year we might be able to harvest our own crop?