The house came with five apple trees nobody had pruned for 20 years. The first year they gave little. This year, after a spring without frost, I picked 200 kilos and understood why nobody in the countryside gets too excited about a good year: something has to be done with it.

Juice: 60 kg

At the communal press in the next village, 1 leu per litre. From 60 kilos of apples you get about 35 litres. Drink it fresh for a week, pasteurise it in bottles at 75 °C for winter, or let it become what it wants: cider if you are lucky, vinegar if not.

Vinegar: 20 kg

Crushed apples, skin and core, in a jar with water and two spoons of sugar, covered with muslin, six weeks somewhere warm. Strain and leave another four weeks. Homemade apple vinegar is gentler than the shop kind and, at 40 lei a litre at the market, is the most valuable thing that comes out of the orchard.

Drying: 30 kg

5 mm slices, on string, in the attic, ten days. Or in the oven at 70 °C with the door ajar, six hours, if you can afford the bill. From 30 kg you keep 4 kg of dried apples, which last a year and are the perfect hiking snack.

Neighbours: 90 kg

The rest went from gate to gate, in buckets, like everyone’s. I got back walnuts, a demijohn of wine and an offer to have my trees pruned in March. This economy appears in no course, but it is the one that holds the village together.