FieldBird Cider

12/30/2022

It’s been another epic year here at Fieldbird! We had the most abundant harvest yet and the tanks are full with many exciting ciders to come! There were some hiccups; broken equipment, gator-troubles, a bad case of fireblight on the Pears, leaking cans, lots of sickness, Joe’s broken hip! Phew, luckily all is on the mend and despite some challenges this year has been SO AWESOME! Here are some highlights from the team:

Ryan: Holly joining our farm team and bringing lots of needed cuddles! (pictured with Britt)

Sammy: The most incredible bloom! The photos can hardly capture what was an epic abundance of vibrant, amazingly scented apple flowers!

Britt: First crush of the season! Seeing everyone’s hard work in the orchard pay off with the most abundant fruit

Mel: Spending early mornings and late evenings in the orchard during harvest time

Joe doing using his favourite tool- the angle grinder and Derick doing his favourite job running the sweeper!

🍎Thank you all the support, we can’t wait to share more with you in 2023!

11/17/2022

The snow has finally fallen and we are beginning to feel winter draw nearer. The press line has been deep-cleaned, sprayer and outdoor tanks emptied and the Cidery is stocked with possibly the most cider we have ever pressed in one season!

As things ferment away (stay tuned for more on that intriguing process in a later post) we are preparing for pruning season, one of the great joys of winter we look forward to, even if we don’t quite feel ready for this cold weather yet!

10/20/2022

Some shots from the last little while.

Grateful for the helping hands of the folks of and the amazing leadership of Mel who took these photos and is doing an incredible job making this years harvest run so beautifully, despite a few equipment hiccups!

We are open Friday and Saturday if you’d like to taste some cider 🍎

09/21/2022

Weekend Hours 🍎

Open Thurs/Fri
Closed Sat/Sun

Back to regular hours next weekend!

09/12/2022

Good Monday Morning! Wishing you a week filled with joy similar to that of biting into a Honeycrisp apple as large as your head, like Mel is enjoying here! It’s hard to tell the scale in this photo but this was truly a GIANT apple.

This week we are tracking the ripeness and getting ready for the Pears and Spartan apples who are next in line to harvest! 🍐🍎

09/02/2022

Fridays call for fortified cider 🍏

Our 2019 Northern Spy Fortified Cider to be exact.

Available in store and coming soon online 👀

Did you know all of our cider is available online and we ship daily?

Head over to link in bio to shop now!
Free Ontario wide shipping on orders over $70

08/24/2022

Cheers to harvest 2022 🍎🍐🥂

Swing by this weekend to try out featured cider - 2018 Sing Song 🍾

08/22/2022

🍎🍏 And so it’s begun! Harvest season has started earlier than expected, even before the new shippment of press-bags have arrived.

Were making do, and gathering up what we can of the fallen Silken and Jersey Mac, taking extra care to toss out as many spoiled ones as possible while they sit in cold storage for a few days before we can begin pressing.

Pictured here:
• Derick and Mel investigating the sweepers dislodged bolt (that one bolt keeps the paddles turning allowing apples to be picked up off the ground) , luckily we know of this common challenge with the sweeper and got it fixed up quick.
• Silkens loaded with fruit
•The sweeper in action (find more videos in our story highlights)
• 🍏 Silken + Early golden’s
🍎 Jersery Mac

08/18/2022

2018 Sing Song 🍎

Sing Song’s journey started in 2018. We bottled our base cider with extra yeast, let it sit for eight months, and riddled in 2019. Disgorging was a blast! After only a handful of messy explosions we topped off the finished cider with itself and the Sing Song was completed in November 2019.

It was a long process, but it was worth it. Sing Song is refreshingly bone-dry with playful natural bubbles - almost like a creamy mousse.

10.5%,

08/16/2022

Birds of Fieldbird 🦅

The Meadowlark is a common field-bird! Meadowlarks truly love and need grasslands habitat to thrive. Though they prefer prairie or savannah habitat, they will make do with agricultural fields as long as they can establish a large enough territory (about 6 acres), where they can find abundant insects to feast on.

Each spring at the orchard we hear them singing their whistley tune and have witnessed them making nests beneath the apple trees. Sadly, like many grassland loving creatures, Meadowlarks are considered to be in steep decline. This is attributed to early haying of fields which destroys the birds ground nests amongst the grasses. Pesticides, heavy grazing of animals, and habitat loss from the frequent conversion of prairie into housing doesn’t help much either.

With this in mind we take extra care to give the Meadowlarks time to nest amongst the grasses before we mow to get ready for harvest in late July. By this time the fledglings have left the nest and we have some challenging mowing to do to get the lush meadow in shape for effective harvesting.

Joe and Mel are still mowing the rows in prep for harvest, and we are gathering up as many missed pruned branches as possible to make the job easier.

Maybe you will get the lucky gift of hearing these awesome birds next time you visit the cidery

08/16/2022

Birds of Fieldbird 🦅

The Meadowlark is a common field-bird! Meadowlarks truly love and need grasslands habitat to thrive. Though they prefer prairie or savannah habitat, they will make do with agricultural fields as long as they can establish a large enough territory (about 6 acres), where they can find abundant insects to feast on.

Each spring at the orchard we hear them singing their whistley tune and have witnessed them making nests beneath the apple trees. Sadly, like many grassland loving creatures, Meadowlarks are considered to be in steep decline. This is attributed to early haying of fields which destroys the birds ground nests amongst the grasses. Pesticides, heavy grazing of animals, and habitat loss from the frequent conversion of prairie into housing doesn’t help much either.

With this in mind we take extra care to give the Meadowlarks time to nest amongst the grasses before we mow to get ready for harvest in late July. By this time the fledglings have left the nest and we have some challenging mowing to do to get the lush meadow in shape for effective harvesting.

Joe and Mel are still mowing the rows in prep for harvest, and we are gathering up as many missed pruned branches as possible to make the job easier.

Maybe you will get the lucky gift of hearing these awesome birds next time you visit the cidery

08/12/2022

2017 Buzzing Chatter 🍎

In the 1980’s part of the farm was converted to a field site for a tree study; giving us several rows of wonderful, weird, and unique apple trees.

In 2017 we decided to blend some of these experimentals together. Enter, Buzzing Chatter.

Pressed in oak vats, the juice went into a stainless tank to undergo cryo-concentration. We lowered the temperature of the juice to about -4C, freezing out water and concentrating sugar, acidity, and flavour.

Half was then aged in oak, and half in stainless with 10% going through malolactic fermentation. We finished it with a little Northern Spy to add a bit more of an acid kick.

9%, 16g/L, experimental varietal blend.

Pop by and try our 2017 Buzzing Chatter this weekend in our Cider Shop - rotating cider feature changes each weekend 🍎

08/11/2022

🍎 Geneva Red 🍎 Planted in 2019, 4 seasons ago and are already growing these epic red fleshed fruits. Though there are only a handful on each tree we are excited to make a rosé style cider with these fruits!

So whats up with the red flesh? That brilliant colour can be traced back to where apples originated in Kyrgyzstan where a handful of the Niedzwetzkyana apples still grow today. Niedzwetzkyana is the ancestor of every red fleshed apple like these Geneva Red, they share the same genes!

08/05/2022

2018 Northern Spy 🍎

Harvested in the fall of 2018 after a warm, dry summer. 100% Northern Spy apples.

Primary fermentation occurred in oak barrels and was bottled in 2019.

Due to the warm dry weather during the summer of 2018 mellowed down the Spy’s natural acidity, lending a softer, rounder palate than the previous vintage.

8.5%,

08/04/2022

This week the team met again in preparation for this seasons apple harvest. We are making sure we have everything we need on hand to gather and process the apples.

Joe is working hard mowing the many rows of apples and we are keeping a close eye on the ripening fruit.

No fruit are quite ripe yet, but it won’t be long until the early varieties like Silken, Jersey Mac and Bohemia are ready!

It’s looking like an incredibly fruitful season, these Northern Spy are just one of many varieties of apples with a big harvest on the horizon.

Northern Spy~ the people around Bloomfield, New York say the apple is named after the hero in the 1830’s anonymously published novel “The Northern Spy” about an abolitionist who masqueraded as a slave catcher and told slaves about underground railroad routes and safe houses.

Taste this storied apple this week as our featured cider 🍎 !

07/29/2022

Long-Weekend Line Up 🍐🍎

Pop by our Cider Shop for your long weekend essentials!

Open Fri-Sat
Closed Sun-Mon 🍎

07/28/2022

This week after removing the rest of the fireblight branches from the Pears we did some pruning on our top worked apple trees. We didn’t remove much, only taking any undesired rootstock shoots, and really damaged or broken branches.

There were some grafts that blew out of place, a few deer browsed limbs that were dead at the tips and we suspect a bit of fireblight on one or two trees.

Mid summer is not the time of year we find ourselves doing much pruning. This late in the season its unlikely that a pruned limb will encourage more new growth, and if new growth did occur it would have difficulty hardening off in time for winter this late in the growing season.

For now we are putting away the pruning sheers and look forward to picking them up again in December once the trees are dormant

07/22/2022

2019 Black Barred 🍐

The pear trees at our orchard produced an exceptional amount of fruit in 2019. This let us play around with a few different styles. One of which is the 2019 Black Barred. Fermented with the skin on, we wanted to add some sparkle. These pears went into a giant, pressurized, stainless steel tank, giving us refreshing, crisp bubbles. Think of it as prosecco but with pears.

Fun fact 🍐 Black Barred is just one of the handful of Perry’s FieldBird produces. Perry is a term used to indicate a 100% pear cider!

Pop by and try our 2019 Black Barred this weekend in our Cider Shop - rotating cider feature changes each weekend 🍎

07/22/2022

⚡️Fireblight strike⚡️
It’s been a dire time for the Pear trees in the orchard this season. A warm spell in may heading into bloom kicked off the growth cycle of the fireblight bacteria. Then cooler wet conditions made an ideal opportunity for the bacteria to spread A LOT!

It seems we are not alone, the word around the area is that fireblight has been much more prevalent in orchards this season.

So why were the pears hit so bad and not the apples? We can’t know for certain but imagine it could have to do with Fireblight thriving on vigorously growing shoots and these pears have a much more vigorous growth habit than the apples.

A few weeks back Joe and Mel pulled out a few of the worst infected trees and this week we loaded the trailer with prunings of all the fireblight damaged branches and spurs we could find. Hopefully this stops anymore spread.

In addition Mel just sprayed another round of Double Nickel + Cueva as a biological control (More on that later)

🍐
With Pears on the mind the Black Barred Perry (Pear Cider!) is our featured cider for tastings today and tomorrow 🍐

07/19/2022

Fieldbird’s-eye view of the Farm! It might look as if the land is not entirley full of trees, but if you zoom in you would notice so many young trees that have been planted in the past 3/4 years. The other rows looking more sparse are top-worked trees and some dwarf trees.

07/11/2022

If you drive by the orchard this week you may notice the trees look a-lot less green.

This past week Mel sprayed the orchard with Surround- the product name for micronized kaolin clay. This spray puts a fine coating of clay on the leaves of all the trees.

Why? These super fine particles coat everything they touch and rub off easily, especially on the insects who crawl on these leaves. The clay gets all over insects, causing them to constantly need to clean themselves.
They are unable to continue on their mission of eating leaves, laying eggs, burrowing into bark since they are constantly needing to clean themselves. When flying insects land on the clay coated leaves they take a cue from the texture that it is not a real tree and fly elsewhere. Plum curculio is one of the main pests we are targeting with this spray!

Spraying surround also shows us, in a very visual way the coverage of the sprayer machine, and this time around we noticed that trees are getting less spray at the top than the bottom. So this week Joe and Ryan are on the task to rig up something to spray the tree tops better.

07/08/2022

Our Cider Shop is officially open for the season 🍎

We look forward to seeing everyone back at the farm!

Open Friday & Saturday
Weekdays by chance 🍐

06/25/2022

06/14/2022

Harrow Queen, Harrow Sweet, Harrow Delight and Red D’Anjou (the darker red leaves) are some the varieties of pears beginning to take shape in this part of the Orchard!

We are excited to be going through new aerial photos from . The Pears and their unique form really stand out from above!

06/07/2022

From flower to fruitlets in just under a month! It’s amazing to see such abundant and vibrant looking fruit growing.

As we wait and watch the fruit slowly grow and ripen we are already preparing for a smooth harvest. This week the crew is gathering up the last of winters prunings and getting ready to mow of the orchard

06/02/2022

If you wander the orchard you might notice these tags on every few trees! Lucky for us, their smell is almost undetectable, but for the codling moth it’s quite a troubling situation.

The codling moth live in the orchard and their larvae will tunnel into apples and cause great damage to the fruit. They are most likely the culprit behind the “worm” in your apple. If the damage is bad enough tree could drop their fruit before they are ripe.

In comes these Pheromone traps, they work by disrupting the male moths ability to find a female. Since male moths can’t find the females by sight they relay on pheromones, so when these tags are all over the orchard with the same pheromone as the females, it makes it nearly impossible for them to pinpoint their location and thus reproduction can’t occur.

Big shoutout to Joe and Mel for wandering through the orchard and doing this seemingly endless job of putting over 2800 tags up!

05/26/2022

Bloom has come and gone! Its amazing how quickly it happens. These photos were just taken a week apart.

Mel reports abundant buzzing and lots of pollinators flying around, and now we will wait and see hope lots of fruit develops.

Petal fall marks the end of spring grafting and a few more preventative sprays for apple scab and some undesired insects like codling moth, plum curculio, spring feeding caterpillar, oblique leaf rollers and oriental fruit moths!

05/16/2022

May the bloom begin! It always seems astonishing how quickly the trees transition from plump buds to first pink to blooming!

Here the plums blooms are already waining, the pears are flowering in full force and and the apples are blooming, with a handful still in their pink stage!

05/16/2022

May the bloom begin! It always seems astonishing how quickly the trees transition from plump buds to first pink to blooming!

The plums are in full flower, pears have just begun and the apples are at full pink, bound to bloom in the next week or so!