Would you believe, this is already the sixth edition of our newsletter. It seems like only yesterday that we sent the first one out. Hopefully you will enjoy our musings this spring.

Sir Isaac Newton and the apple.

By William Stukeley.

On 15 April 1726 I paid a visit to Sir Isaac at his lodgings in Orbels buildings in Kensington, dined with him, and spent the whole day with him.. 

After dinner, the weather being warm, we went into the garden and drank tea, under the shade of some apple trees, only he and myself.  Amidst other discourse, he told me he was just in the same situation as when, formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. It was occasioned by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself? Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth's centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in matter: and the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth's centre, not in any side of the earth. Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly, or towards the centre. If matter thus draws matter, it must be in proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple. That there is a power, like that we here call gravity, which extends itself through the universe

And thus by degrees he began to apply this property of gravitation to the motion of the earth and of the heavenly bodies, to consider their distances, their magnitudes and their periodical revolutions; to find out that this property, conjointly with a progressive motion impressed on them at the beginning, perfectly solved their circular courses; kept the planets from falling upon one another, or dropping all together into one centre; and thus he unfolded the universe. This was the birth of these amazing discoveries whereby he built philosophy on a solid foundation, to the astonishment of all of Europe. 

Developments at The Apple Farm.
We were delighted with the recent news that we are to receive grant-aid under the National Development Plan for the construction of a new cold-store for apples, and juice-making equipment. Another development that we are currently working on is to construct a new tennis court for our campers. This will leave the current yard free for car- parking in the summertime, which is good news, because in recent years the yard was too busy for playing tennis in safety. 

In our farm-shop at the moment.

Our eating apple supply has come to an end. We were very happy with the quality of fruits this year, and very happy that we had enough to keep going until the end of February. We still have a few Bramley's Seedling cookers available, but they will be gone in the next few weeks. It will be back to the rhubarb tart for the summer from then on.

Speaking of summer, we are looking forward to a good crop of strawberries and raspberries from June onwards. In the meantime, we will have strawberry jam and apple jelly available from our shop. Also available, as usual, is our Karmine apple juice. 

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