Partners Meeting 2 - DE

Transnational Partner Meeting 2 – Germany

Report

At Kloster Steinfeld, Hermann-Josef-Straße 4, 53925 Kall-Steinfeld

February 27 – March 2, 2020

February 27, Thursday

The partners arrived during the evening at the house of family Klink, where we had dinner and a wide-ranging talk about what happened since the last meeting. This time all five partners arrived with two participants. Later the participants from the UK, Poland and Italy were brought to their accommodation in the monastery Kloster Steinfeld, where the meeting was held.

February 28, Friday

We started the day by getting to know the snowy landscape around Nettersheim and then visited the Nature Centre Eifel in Nettersheim.
As there were new participants in the meeting (UK: Martin Hayes, DE: Martin Holzportz, I: Isabella Dalla Ragione and Matilde Tei, HU: Támas Lantos) the meeting started with an introduction round before we did some basic planning and administration for the project in the seminar room.

UK
Adam is Coordinator of CORE and Director of Susted, and chairman of a community group that lends equipment for processing juice and runs courses.

Martin is a professional orchardist, who works and used to live in orchards, works with grants from the government agency, belongs to the Gloucestershire Orchard Trust, runs school projects and Trust Juice.
Trust Juice is a non-profit making project bringing together orchard owners and smaller growers to use fruit otherwise left to rot on the ground. Trust Juice offers payment, either in kind - pruning neglected trees in cash, produce or a combination of the three and works with volunteer organisations interested in orchards. The preferred payment is juice. Trust Juice processes only unsprayed fruit from Gloucestershire.

Poland
Ela is the vice president of her organisation that set up many orchards in the last five years with several thousand trees, mainly traditional varieties.

Grzegorz has his job as the national pomologist but it is also his hobby. He works on old varieties with a comprehensive collection in the institute.

Italy
Isabella continues her father's project of setting up an orchard with traditional varieties from Umbria. She continues this project as a foundation. She also looks for references of fruits in old paintings. Her speciality is pears.
Matilda is the daughter of Isabella, joins and continues the project of her mother and grandfather. She studies agriculture and landscape architecture and has written a scientific paper on hazelnuts.

Hungary
Péter is a chemist with an orchard of three ha and about 100 fruit trees in an ecovillage. He spread the idea and practical skills of traditional living and working with nature.
Támas is an agronomist who lives near the south border of Hungary. He owns an orchard of five ha with about 400 fruit trees. He is very interested in the systems of orchards in Russia, Ukraine and Hungary, therefore he is part of a cooperation with five countries and part in a network of orchardists in the Carpathian region. He conducts courses in permaculture.

Germany
Astrid is a member of the executive board of SoNNe eG. Her part-time job is both in the office, conducting courses, and working on the SoNNe Mobile Press. Her profession skill is with tree nurseries.
Elke is a geographer and also a member of the executive board of SoNNe eG. She also conducts courses and helps on the Mobile Press. She has another related job in the Biological Station running environmental education projects and promoting and protecting orchards.
Martin is also a member of the executive board of SoNNe eG and has the main responsibility for the two Mobile Presses. For SoNNe eG he conducts courses and works with schools in orchard projects. He is a retired postman.

After the introductions we met a guest from the Biological Station of the Department of Euskirchen and member of SoNNe eG, Heike Günther. In a professional presentation she reported about the funding programmes for orchards in Germany, especially the programmes financed by the EU and the state of North Rhine Westphalia.

After lunch the German partners presented an example of how they run the theoretical part of a pruning course, preparing the participants for the practical work. Afterwards we visited two local orchards on our way to Bad Münstereifel.

The first orchard was an old orchard in Zingsheim with old and uncultivated trees, many of them in decline or toppled down. The owners are an old married couple who cannot manage to care for the trees anymore.

The second orchard was a development compensation area near Bad Münstereifel, with young trees, which has also been used for pruning workshops for orchardists. There we discussed different ways of pruning.

The late afternoon was reserved for a walk through the medieval town of Bad Münstereifel where we also had dinner.

February 29, Saturday

On Saturday morning the partners were invited to be the audience in the practical pruning day of SoNNe eG. It was carried out in an orchard that is a development compensation area and in the care of SoNNe eG. The idea of the practical day is that experienced pruners and orchardists meet to prune together in small groups and discuss why and what to do. So they can learn from each other and develop their skills. Unfortunately there were only five participants present that day. The CORE members discussed different ways of pruning with some practical exercises.

After lunch we continued to work on the project in the seminar room in the monastery. The three participants new in the group gave short presentations about their activities. Martin Hayes from the UK gave a presentation on Trust Juice. This is a social enterprise that uses unsprayed fruit from several traditional orchards for the production of juice. The sales of the juice support other nature conservation projects.

Tamas Lantos from Hungary described his permaculture approach and work in his orchard with 400 different varieties of apples, pears, quinces, medlars, cherries and plums.

We then discussed and completed the prepared Planning results sheet.

In a short break we visited the basilica of the monastery which has a special relationship to apples. Saint Herman Josef, revered here, grew up in Cologne as a son of a poor family of artisans. As a strong believing child he is said to have given apples to Our Lady in the St. Mary´s Church in the Capitol in Cologne. Therefore he is also known as the “Apple Saint”. At the age of 12 he became a canon in Steinfeld. On his sarcophagus in the Basilica of the Monastery as well as in St. Maria in the Capitol you will always find fresh apples, not only on his honour day in May.

For dinner we joined the other guests in the dining room of the Monastery. In the evening we met for apple and fruit tasting with Hungarian and German varieties and for informal exchange.

March 1, Sunday

In the morning we continued working on the CORE planning in the seminar room in Steinfeld. Later we had a presentation from SoNNe eG member Uli Meisen, who leases an orchard which is a development compensation area from the local government. Over the last 15-20 years he has grown over 100 fruit trees, storing, processing and selling fresh and preserved fruit and other products at a weekly market. He gave a detailed presentation of his approach to marketing orchard produce emphasising the commercial opportunities and problems. He also gave us an insight into the diversity of the varieties in his orchard in Dottel.

After lunch we had to say goodbye to the partners of Italy and Hungary. The remaining participants visited the orchard of Uli Meisen following his presentation.

Afterwards we visited some other traditional orchards with standard trees.

A new orchard near Wallenthal, set up in 2016.

The nearly closed ring of orchards around the village of Bescheid with mostly old, well-kept trees.
Finally an orchard near Glehn was nearly left natural, with trees of different ages and some with great problems from parasitic mistletoe.

After a short coffee stop we visited the two Mobile Fruit Presses of the SoNNe eG, overwintered in a storage barn. There Astrid and Martin explained the workflows on a Juicing day and demonstrated the workings of the different parts of the machine to the CORE members. They also reported on the organisation of juicing dates and the financial aspects of running a Mobile Fruit Press.

One of the machines in action was also presented in a short TV movie. The professional film was shot on a juicing day a few years earlier. Unfortunately it is prohibited from showing in public.

We finished the day with dinner in a typical pub/ restaurant of the Eifel region.

March 2, Monday

After breakfast the guests from Poland and the UK left the meeting to travel home by train and plane.